Kaaarraccck – The Broken Back Of Barack

Update II: We still don’t know why Barack Obama appeared last night on our TV picturebox. Peggy Noonan who used to take so much delight in attacking this website because she was so enamored of Barack Obama has come over to our side. Writes Peg “He should have canceled the speech. It was halfhearted, pro forma and strange.” About the stagecraft La Nooner squawks “They have him stand at a podium and talk into an empty room under Bela Lugosi lighting.” It’s not the lighting that is the problem. Obama is lifeless and drained of blood.

“Take your pick: The NYT, the LA Times, WaPo, Reuters, Politico, Foreign Policy, and the Daily Beast, where Eli Lake notes that we’re now trusting a guy who supplies Assad with weapons (and who has himself been slow to get rid of his own gas) to be the top cop in taking his weapons away.”

Perhaps the speech tonight is to rally Obama supporters and Syria attack proponents. But that is very hard to do. Picture Syria attack supporters who believed this was the world’s “Munich moment”. Now they realize they have been on the side of a monumental world historical BOOB. Barack Obama as the Neville Chamberlain of the new age of hope and change:

“Peace In Our Time: Obama Caves to Putin, Assad, Iran

On Monday, the Obama administration, overcome by its own frantic confusion over a situation of its own making in Syria, fainted into the arms of Russian President Vladimir Putin – and, in the process, appeased the Syrian regime after Bashar al-Assad gassed some 1,429 people in Damascus last month.

In a London news conference on Monday, Secretary of State John Kerry suggested that Assad could avoid war by “turn[ing] over every single bit of his chemical weapons to the international community in the next week. Turn it over, all of it, without delay and allow a full and total accounting.” The Russian regime immediately responded to Kerry’s off-the-cuff remark – his second gaffe of the day, after he suggested an “unbelievably small” action against Syria as a deterrent — by suggesting that Syria turn over his chemical weapons to international control. [snip]

Thus, the Russians and Syrians have bartered a way out of Assad’s current predicament. Assad remains in power. His regime remains intact. He called the American bluff and won, and will be emboldened, as will his handlers in Tehran. The al-Qaeda opposition remains intact, too, perhaps slightly emboldened by Obama’s bluster. Putin seizes global leadership on foreign policy. Meanwhile, Obama claims victory, and his media lackeys genuflect before his brilliance.

This is a far cry from just last week, when the Obama administration declared Assad the new Hitler, suggested that the UN was irrelevant to action in Syria, and demanded immediate response to human rights violations in Damascus. “Bashar Assad now joins the list of Adolf Hitler and Saddam Hussein [who] have used these weapons in time of war,” Kerry explained just nine days ago. Even today, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) invoked the Holocaust as a rationale for military action in Syria.

Six days ago, Kerry stated that if Congress did not authorize use of force in Syria, the United States would face a “Munich moment,” referencing British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s infamous appeasement of Adolf Hitler after Hitler’s annexation of the Sudetenland in 1938. Chamberlain declared “peace in our time.” Hitler, emboldened, launched World War II.”

Picture Barack Obama supporters. They will fall for anything their boob god asks for. They stand not on principle but on mud. They are assistant clowns at the rodeo. They are cheerleaders for a boob. These Hopium Guzzlers pumping pom-poms are especially to be mocked. “Help create a war that puts the ‘liberal’ in neo-liberal. . . thousands of organic, grass-fed bombs, hybrid Prius tanks, rockets controlled by iPads, and drones that play the Luminiers. . . The most social-media focused war ever.”

“The only reason why we are seeing this proposal,” said White House spokesman Jay Carney, “is because of the U.S. threat of military action.”

Right, Putin is laughing to himself. Whatever. If Obama wants to sell it like a Christmas miracle on Pennsylvania Avenue that’s fine with Putin, because Putin won. [snip]

What’s unclear is whether Obama understands that his foreign policy legacy will be to have ruined the American position in the Middle East, our patrimony of the last seven decades. If the 1979 takeover of the U.S. embassy in Tehran signaled weakness, the Russian deal screams surrender. The real surprise is that it’s not Iran kicking the United States out of the region under Obama’s watch, but Putin.

The Syrian government has accepted the proposal because they understand it is an empty formalism. [snip]

Who knows what the Russians told Assad? For God’s sake, just say it’s your chemical weapons arsenal you’re turning over for safekeeping. Send them canisters of perfume, or cat urine. The Americans just want a deal, the president thinks he’s saving face. If the Americans are smart, they’ll let the whole thing drop and call it a win, but knowing them they’ll come back later and complain that you’re not keeping your end of the bargain. No problem. We’ll stall them. And then every time Obama whines it will remind your adversaries and U.S. allies around the world that the Americans are empty suits, a bunch of legalistic bureaucrats who are incapable of standing with their friends.

It’s hard not to be impressed with Putin. A man who up until yesterday seemed merely crass, has revealed himself to be capable of great subtlety. For years his method was so transparent, so obvious, his vulgarities intended to appall and shock the White House. He accused one secretary of state of plotting against him, and another he calls a liar. He gave Edward Snowden refuge. He dispatches his thugs to beat up LGBT teenagers. After a while, the administration learned not to be surprised by anything Putin does. He’s a bully, smitten with his own macho self-image. That’s all true, but now we see that Putin was testing Obama and looking for openings.”

That above bit is from supporters of a Syrian attack. Why anyone would sign up for an attack led by a rodeo clown is a mystery to the sensible. But they signed up to support Barack and they look like the fools they are. Obama cannot be trusted and they trusted him. Results? Comedy.

Why is Barack Obama giving a speech tonight? There’s a report that the speech will only last 15 minutes. It’s 15 minutes too long. When the speech was announced it was supposed to help get votes for the authorization of an attack on Syria. But the vote has been postponed or cancelled so what is the purpose of this waste of time?

“How bad has it gotten for The One? Quote: “In their private moments, Mr. Obama’s allies said even the argument that his presidency would for all intents and purposes be over did not sway some unsympathetic Democrats, frustrated over how few victories there have been to hang on to in Mr. Obama’s fifth year in office.”

The House was always going to be a heavy lift, and cracking 60 in the Senate wouldn’t have been easy given the depth of public opposition, but a bare majority in a chamber controlled by O’s own party?”

“A senior Senate aide tells me that support for the authorization of strikes had not yet reached 50 Senators, even privately, meaning its passage is in doubt, even in the Senate. “This allows for a pause in the decision-making process,” the aide says.”

Failure leads to failure and the massive failure of Obama’s failed attack strategy will lead to more failures on ObamaCare, immigration reform, the debt ceiling and the other fever dreams of Obama’s Hopium Guzzlers.

White House Releases Statement On Benghazi: “We Remain Committed To Bringing The Perpetrators To Justice”…

Bunch of bullshit, they know exactly who did it and have yet to bring a single person involved to justice.

Via WaPo:

The White House is out with a new statement on security during the Sept. 11 anniversary on Wednesday.

Contained in the statement is a pledge to continue to pursue those responsible for the killings of four Americans in Benghazi, Libya, a year ago.

“September 11th has been a day of remembrance for 12 years for Americans and others around the world,” White House press secretary Jay Carney said. “The events of last year, losing four brave Americans – Chris Stevens, Sean Smith, Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods – brought home the reality of the challenges we face in the world. As we near this day of remembrance, we continue to mourn the death of our cherished colleagues and honor their dedication to public service. We remain committed to bringing the perpetrators of the Benghazi attacks to justice and to ensuring the safety of our brave personnel serving overseas.”

Before I read Admin’s wonderful post I just had to run back and report-

I’ve been on a reality blog and some hopium supporters were bored and came on the blog and posted that they were ready to watch Obama on teevee. So many people attacked them and told them to get lost and Obama was a terrible President, it did my heart good. It was a beautiful moment. They left.

The party comes to a halt when President Obama addresses the nation about Syria on the big screen. Room is hushed. Nobody notices that the polls have closed. Obama makes an argument for a targeted hit, but says “we’ve seen some hopeful signs.” The President says he has asked Congress to postpone a strike vote. The room exhales. Scattered applause at the bar. Music turned up. Party on.

There is a vague offer by Vladimir Putin agreed to by Syria to turn over chemical weapons, but Russia opposes a binding U.N. resolution to that effect and the details are to be worked out. Putin also insists that the U.S. agree not to use force.

We will see how this all plays out, but it appears that Obama is negotiating the terms of a surrender to Putin and Assad.

A serious foreign-policy intellectual said recently that Putin’s problem is that he’s a Russian leader in search of a Nixon, a U.S. president he can really negotiate with, a stone player who can talk grand strategy and the needs of his nation, someone with whom he can thrash it through and work it out. Instead he has Obama, a self-besotted charismatic who can’t tell the difference between showbiz and strategy, and who enjoys unburdening himself of moral insights to his peers.

State Sen. President John Morse’s SD-11 is 33.2 percent Dem, 25.1 percent Republican, and 41.7 percent other. President Barack Obama got 61.2 percent of the vote, but Morse got just 50.6 percent of the vote in 2010. And Republicans have a plurality of “super voters”—those who voted in 2010, 2011 and 2012 elections in the district.
Sen. Angela Giron’s SD-03 is 45.2 percent Dem, 22.9 percent Republican, and 31.9 percent other. President Barack Obama got 59.7 percent of the 2012 two-way vote, and Giron got 55 percent of the vote in 2010. Democrats have a solid advantage in “super voters”, 14K versus 8K Republicans.
Yet word from my sources in the district has been that Morse is in better shape than Giron. Weird, if accurate.Democrats dramatically outspent Republicans. Combined, Democratic-aligned groups spent $2.3 million, while GOP-aligned groups spent just $482K—$361K of that directly from the NRA. Indeed, without the NRA, there’s no recall. Furthermore, most of the spending on the Democratic side has been from the campaigns themselves, not outside groups. (Note that our fundraising has been directly to the two candidates, which can use the money most effectively.)
You guys contributed about $150K of the $913K raised by Angela Giron (16 percent), and $160K of the 658K raised by John Morse (24 percent).Democrats have run 2,346 of the 2,490 ads aired in the campaign. The Republicans running in the recalls haven’t run a single ad. Now if either Democrat loses this recall, it’ll be further proof for my theory that TV advertising is increasingly irrelevant. But this is a special case—Republican wingnuts don’t need to be told by the TV box that there’s a recall. They’re activated and motivated. It’s lower-performing Democratic voters that need to be educated and mobilized. Thus it follows that every single Republican ad in the race has been negative, but only two of the nine Democratic ads follow suit.

DENVER — Democrats don’t often complain about voter fraud, but the prospect of outside voters taking advantage of an apparent loophole in Colorado’s new election law to participate in the legislative recalls has the bill’s sponsor crying foul.

State Rep. Dan Pabon (D-Denver), who sponsored the Voter Access and Modernized Elections Act, said Wednesday that those who say the law allows so-called “gypsy voters” are essentially advocating election fraud.

….In that time, America has worked with allies to provide humanitarian support, to help the moderate opposition, and to shape a political settlement. But I have resisted calls for military action, because we cannot resolve someone else’s civil war through force, particularly after a decade of war in Iraq and Afghanistan….

….The question now is what the United States of America, and the international community, is prepared to do about it. Because what happened to those people — to those children — is not only a violation of international law, it’s also a danger to our security.

Let me explain why. If we fail to act, the Assad regime will see no reason to stop using chemical weapons. As the ban against these weapons erodes, other tyrants will have no reason to think twice about acquiring poison gas, and using them. Over time, our troops would again face the prospect of chemical warfare on the battlefield. And it could be easier for terrorist organizations to obtain these weapons, and to use them to attack civilians….

….Now, I know that after the terrible toll of Iraq and Afghanistan, the idea of any military action, no matter how limited, is not going to be popular. After all, I’ve spent four and a half years working to end wars, not to start them. Our troops are out of Iraq. Our troops are coming home from Afghanistan. And I know Americans want all of us in Washington — especially me — to concentrate on the task of building our nation here at home: putting people back to work, educating our kids, growing our middle class….

….Neither Assad nor his allies have any interest in escalation that would lead to his demise. And our ally, Israel, can defend itself with overwhelming force, as well as the unshakeable support of the United States of America.……

Are you f#&%king kidding me???????? We are supposed to believe this SHIT?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

The Syrian crisis has damaged respect for Barack Obama. Yet the spectacle of the leader of the U.S. being outplayed at every turn by Vladimir Putin is a vastly more serious matter.

The President of the United States is facing a grave crisis of trust at home and abroad.

Whatever the fate of the draft resolution on chemical weapons that France has put before the UN Security Council, the Syrian crisis has damaged respect for Barack Obama, probably irretrievably.

Less than a fortnight ago, David Cameron suffered humiliation when he lost his Commons vote after demanding support for military action.

Russia’s brutish president has launched a diplomatic initiative which leaves the U.S. wrong-footed and potentially isolated.

Fareed Zakaria, one of the country’s most influential commentators, calls the Washington administration’s handling of Syria ‘a case study in how not to do foreign policy’.
Weakness

This presidency has touched a low point. Over the past five years, Obama’s lassitude and political ineptitude have increasingly become apparent.

His rhetoric remains as impressive as ever, but his conduct of office is hallmarked by weakness and indecision.

This matters to us all much more than Cameron’s bungling, because the U.S. is the most important nation on earth.

For all its shortcomings, it represents most of the values democracies cherish, just as Putin’s Russia embodies many of the evils from which they recoil.

So what has gone wrong?

From the start of the Syrian civil war, Obama has used words with a carelessness we expect from media commentators, but not from a president.

Just over two years ago, he declared that President Assad must leave office. He saw little risk in saying this, because back then, in 2011, the Syrian dictator’s regime indeed seemed to be crumbling fast.

It was still tottering last year, when Obama made an even more unwise remark: he said that any use of illegal chemical weapons by Assad would represent the crossing of a red line, which would force the West to act.

Worse — as a friend of mine in the U.S. State Department remarked this week — the White House failed to use the months that followed to row back, to make the threat of military action less explicit.

A spokesman could easily have told the press corps: ‘What the president really meant was . . .’. But no one did. And so the world was left with a clear promise that, if the Assad regime used chemical weapons, the U.S. would start shooting.

But in his heart, its president did not want to do so. While the British boy scouts in Downing Street urged on Washington with arguments about its moral responsibility to plunge into Syria, the White House was unresponsive.

Obama wanted to get his country out of wars, not into them.

Moreover, the U.S. military, like its British counterparts, are implacably hostile to intervention, because they cannot identify clear and attainable objectives. General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has said as much publicly.
Putin proposes that Assad’s chemical weapons should be placed under international control

Putin proposes that Assad’s chemical weapons should be placed under international control

But last month came a new and shocking act by the Assad regime.

Some 1,400 people were killed in a Damascus suburb, and most of us accept a high probability that this was done with sarin gas.

Where, now, was the U.S. president’s commitment to act if Assad ‘crossed the red line’?

Obama allowed himself to be persuaded by his advisers that he must deliver at least a gesture strike in Syria, to preserve America’s reputation for meaning what it says.

In the weeks since, however, a black farce has unfolded.

Polls show most Americans as hostile to intervention as are the British people — and indeed the French.

Near the end of his speech to the nation on Syria, President Obama quoted Franklin Roosevelt: “Our national determination to keep free of foreign wars and foreign entanglements cannot prevent us from feeling deep concern when ideas and principles that we have cherished are challenged.”

Which of FDR’s stirring wartime speeches does this quotation come from?

None of them. The sentence Obama quoted is from a speech Roosevelt gave on October 2, 1935, in San Diego. It’s part of a section of the speech defending a non-interventionist “good neighbor” policy in Latin America and non-interventionism more broadly. Indeed, FDR mentions our “deep concern” mostly to make clear that our involvement will be limited to such concern, because, as he says, other nations’ policies contrary to our rules of conscience and conduct “are beyond our jurisdiction.”

Presumably Obama didn’t know the context of his quotation from FDR. But it seems inadvertently fitting that Obama quoted not the FDR who fought Hitler but the FDR of the 1930s. As it happens, the day after the San Diego speech, Mussolini invaded Ethiopia. Italian troops repeatedly and brazenly used poison gas in that conflict. The world, including of course the U.S., expressed “deep concern”­but did nothing.

This article at Common Dreams was published in The Progressive, which has promoted and protected Obama like the savior they thought he would be. Ain’t it funny how mistaken people can be when they close their minds to the obvious facts, and form an opinion based solely on race and “words, just words?” Anyone, especially any journalist, who is surprised Barack’s inability to function as president should be too embarrassed to say it publicly. Instead, they should just recognize their own incompetence and seek another line of work.

__________________

Published on Wednesday, September 11, 2013 by The Progressive

“The 5 Most Ludicrous War Claims in Obama’s Syria Speech”

by Matthew Rothschild

1. “I possess the authority to order military strikes.”
No you don’t, Mr. President. Only Congress has the authority to declare war, and ordering military strikes would be a clear act of war, thus violating the Constitution. It would also violate the War Powers Act, which says that the President can’t engage in hostilities without a declaration of war or specific Congressional authorization unless there is “a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces.” And Syria has done no such thing.

2. Syria’s use of chemical weapons is “a danger to our security.”
Note that four paragraphs later, he said it wasn’t “a direct or imminent threat to our security.” So what kind of a threat is it? Well, a rather tenuous one. “Other tyrants will have no reason to think twice about acquiring poison gas and using them. Over time, our troops would again face the prospect of chemical warfare on the battlefield.” Really? It is very unlikely that some dictator would do this because he would know that if he did, the U.S. would drop a nuke on his head. That was the warning that Saddam Hussein got from the U.S. in January of 1991, and he didn’t use his chemical weapons even as the U.S. was destroying most of his army. If that threat was enough to stop Saddam, it’s likely good enough to stop other dictators.

Obama also acknowledged that “the Assad regime does not have the ability to seriously threaten our military.”

Let’s just look at Israel. Obama contradicted himself just a few minutes later when he said, “Neither Assad nor his allies have any interest in escalation that would lead to his demise, and our ally, Israel, can defend itself with overwhelming force, as well as the unshakable support of the United States of America.”

4. “It’s true that some of Assad’s opponents are extremists. But Al Qaeda will only draw strength in a more chaotic Syria if people there see the world doing nothing to prevent innocent civilians from being gassed.”
Only?

If U.S. missile strikes seriously degrade Assad’s military, they would certainly help the extremists who are allied with Al Qaeda in Syria.

5. “For nearly seven decades, the United States has been the anchor of global security. This has meant doing more than forging international agreements; it has meant enforcing them. The burdens of leadership are often heavy, but the world’s a better place because we have borne them.”

Was the U.S. an anchor of global security and an enforcer of international agreements when it overthrew the Mossadegh government in Iran in 1953, or the Arbenz government in Guatemala in 1954?
Is the world a better place because the U.S. helped overthrow Salvador Allende’s democratically elected government in Chile almost exactly 40 years ago?
Is the world a better place because the United States killed 3 million people in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia and because we dropped 20 million gallons of napalm (waging our own version of chemical warfare) on those countries?

Is the world a better place because the United States supported brutal governments in El Salvador and Guatemala in the 1980s, which killed tens of thousands of their own people?
Is the world a better place because George Bush waged an illegal war against Iraq and killed between 100,000 and a million civilians?
And what international agreements was the United States enforcing when it tortured people after 9/11?

I was aghast when CBS opened a large tv window showing POTUS, VPOTUS and wives. Only one who appeared to be experiencing emotions was Dr. Jill. Obama’s particularly had that empty look. Held hands, tho I think, on return to our house. The ultimate fraud. I wish he would fundamentally depart DC. Anyway, something I like from Politico:
White House tweets to blunt speech critics
…“Tonight’s speech was very probably the least consequential vitally important speech ever,” David Rothkopf, the CEO of the Foreign Policy Group tweeted. “President [sent] crystal clear message that on Syria the thing he feels strongest about is his own ambivalence.”
“Maybe it would have been better to have postponed the speech along with the vote,” wrote Jeffrey Goldberg, the Bloomberg View columnist. “After two years of saying Assad should go, the message now is Assad can stay. We just want to take away one of his weapons systems.”
Those tweets and others, which came from some of the most influential voices in foreign policy journalism, elicited a strong and immediate pushback from the Obama administration….http://www.politico.com/story/2013/09/white-house-tweets-syria-speech-96599.html

TRIPOLI, Libya A powerful car bomb exploded Wednesday near Libya’s Foreign Ministry building in the heart of the eastern coastal city of Benghazi, security officials said, exactly one year after an attack there killed the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans.
The early morning blast targeted a building that once housed the U.S. Consulate under the rule of King Idris, who former Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi overthrew in a 1969 bloodless coup. The explosion caused no serious casualties, though several passers-by were slightly wounded, officials said.
The bomb blew out a side wall of the building, leaving desks, filing cabinets and computers strewn among the concrete rubble. It also damaged the Benghazi branch of the Libyan Central Bank along a major thoroughfare in the city.
No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, which also comes on the 12th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks in the U.S. The security officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to journalists.http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-202_162-57602373/benghazi-office-of-libya-foreign-ministry-hit-by-bomb-on-anniversary-of-sept-11-attack-on-u.s-consulate/

This CNN poll is featured at The Moderate Voice. The first red flag anytime CNN conducts a poll on anything related to Obama is that it was conducted by CNN. Even though the numbers are underwhelming, I’m sure much effort was expended to maintain Obama’s messiahship. Soledad probably went door to door demanding that the viewers polled support her guy – threatening all with being publicly proclaimed a “racist” and denounced worse than Paula Deen at a NAACP meeting.

__________

“CNN Instant Poll: 6 in 10 speech-watchers back Obama on Syria”

Sep 10, 2013 by JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief

“A new CNN poll conducted right after President Barack Obama’s speech tonight suggests two things (1)the speech was not a flop and (2) the speech was hardly a game-changer:”

“President [sent] crystal clear message that on Syria the thing he feels strongest about is his own ambivalence.”
_________

Now that’s a good, tight hit.

Wonder what MO was thinking. Knowing how she feels about this country, which she became proud of only after her husband was allowed and enabled to steal the office of president, I always hate to see her featured when a display of patriotism is called for. You know she her anger is seething underneath that hand on her heart. You just expect her to either spontaneously combust from rage, or start shooting flaming arrows from her arm pits, unfettered by sleeves to enhance speed and accuracy.

[Mooch] shooting flaming arrows from her arm pits
———————————–
Maybe that’s why Putin winked in photo at top of this post.
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
Foxy did you know Rand Paul will campaign in NJ with Steve Lonegan this Friday?
Call me outrageous. I sent postcards to lots of Republicans, mostly House, stating Lonegan’s tough fight, imploring them to help however they could. With a local paper saying Booker’s popularity is due to his success/Newark, and yet Cory received international recognition for his MLK speech on 8/24 where he rallied AA’s to fight for justice, and money … then Barack’s endorsement of his candidacy, I had to do something. I added in Paul, Cruz to that mailing and
/heavy sarcasm/ Rand has not mentioned if the card I sent him had any influence. I do hope they will support if even behind the scenes. Now to your video just up. 🙂

September 11th, 2013 will be remembered as the day when millions of Americans made a statement. This is our country and we are taking it back no matter how far we have to go to do it. It is a new day of independence.

Much like July 4th 1776 when we declared that we were no longer slaves of Britain, today there is a new declaration being made. We will no longer be ruled by servants who act as our masters.

My friend was right. This is a warning shot and there will not be another.

Leonora
Interesting article – thought provoking. The picture of the falling man? Horrible? Yes, certainly it was a day of horror, but we must not hide from that horror. I see the picture as an emblem of human dignity in the face of death and destruction.

Update: We still don’t know why Barack Obama appeared last night on our TV picturebox. Peggy Noonan who used to take so much delight in attacking this website because she was so enamored of Barack Obama has come over to our side. Writes Peg “He should have canceled the speech. It was halfhearted, pro forma and strange.” About the stagecraft La Nooner squawks “They have him stand at a podium and talk into an empty room under Bela Lugosi lighting.” It’s not the lighting that is the problem. Obama is lifeless and drained of blood.

“Take your pick: The NYT, the LA Times, WaPo, Reuters, Politico, Foreign Policy, and the Daily Beast, where Eli Lake notes that we’re now trusting a guy who supplies Assad with weapons (and who has himself been slow to get rid of his own gas) to be the top cop in taking his weapons away.”

A large rally to commemorate 9/11 is roaring through the Washington, D.C., area.

Thousands of bikers with the group “Two Million Bikers to D.C.” are snarling traffic on the Beltway with a ride honoring the victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and the members of the military called to serve after the attacks.

On their Facebook page, in all caps, the group said they will stand by the Constitution and Bill of Rights, adding that they’re “against any fundamental transformation of America.”

The first pictures of a stomach-turning torture chamber where a British-born Massachusetts resident planned to rape, murder and eat children have emerged.

Prosecutors are pushing for would-be cannibal Geoffrey Portway, 40, to be put away for 27 years after he confessed to plotting the heinous crimes. He will be sentenced next Tuesday.

Photographs taken by investigators of Portway’s Worchester home in 2012 show an eerie staircase leading to a hidden basement room containing a ‘child-sized homemade coffin,’ a steel cage, handcuffs and a set of butcher’s knives.

Leonora, I must not have seen what you saw at Esquire. Apparently there was a t-shirt or a tacky ad using the pic disrespectfully, but all I saw at Esquire was the pic of the falling man and an article about the picture.

Which goes to show you how supportive they are to changing their image and supporting American polices against radical Islam. Here they had an opportunity to have a voice, to stand with America, to change the trajectory…didn’t happen.
There are no moderate Muslims…in my book.

Republican Senator Bob Corker has worked with the White House on the domestic front, and most recently on Syria.

But Corker is now exasperated with the way the administration, and told CNN’s Dana Bash he sent an e-mail to the White House chief of staff saying he was disappointed, and adding “you make it very hard to help you.”

“The president just seems to be very uncomfortable being commander-in-chief of this nation,” Corker told CNN.

The Arab media has been butchering President Barack Obama’s image in the Middle East, portraying him as weak, lacking leadership, and scheming for American domination. But he’s not faring much better in the United States’ closest ally in the region – Israel.

A review of Israeli media by POLITICO shows a few clear story lines: Vladimir Putin has outplayed the president; Iran is strengthened; and Obama is a weak leader that Israel may no longer be able to count on to help stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

On the front page of Tuesday’s Israel Hayom, a neoconservative paper, the banner headline read “Russian Roulette.” Maariv, a center-right paper, ran a cartoon over the weekend of Putin as a cat prowling around Obama who had been drawn as a little bird in a cage. The left-leaning Haaretz ran a series of cartoons featuring Obama and Putin with one, titled “Scapegoat” showing Obama unsuccessfully chasing a chicken with the face of Bashar al-Assad while Putin looks on.

The lead story on many Israeli newspapers and websites on Wednesday – after Obama’s speech to the nation – focused on a potential deal between Russia and Iran that would supply missile systems to Iran and help it build a second nuclear reactor. Iran’s President, Hassan Rowhani, is set to meet Putin on Friday during the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Kyrgyzstan.

“Ronald Reagan must be spinning in his grave…the Russians are making a comeback, thanks to the Obama administration,” wrote Yehuda Balanga, a professor at Bar Ilan University, in an opinion piece for Maariv on Tuesday, according to a translation by POLITICO. “Despite its support of the ‘bad guys’ of the Middle East (Iran and Syria), Russia seems now more than ever to have a solution to the Syrian crisis in their hands.”

On Wednesday, most Israeli papers did not feature a photo of the president on their front pages – instead Putin and Syrian rebels dominated. The few who did feature Obama, such as the Hebrew version of Haaretz, the popular website Walla, or the English-language newspaper The Jerusalem Post, ran photos of the president from behind, looking down, or from far away.

Pundits in a conversation taped for Ynet.com, the web version of centrist newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, said after Obama’s Tuesday address to the nation that the President had appeared confused and vacilating until Putin gave Obama a ladder from which to climb down from the ledge of asking Congress for military intervention.

“Putin spread out a safety net for Obama after he jumped,” Lior Weintraub, the former spokesperson for the Israeli embassy in Washington, said in the segment.

But some in the Israeli media were thankful for the delay in military action, since it could have led to Syrian or Iranian retaliation on Israel.

Good to see Israel and Israel supporters disabusing themselves of the notion that Obama is of any help whatsoever.

We’re halfway there. Missourians are, now, waiting on the state senate to do the deed. Their veto override would ensure that the Second Amendment Preservation Act (HB 436) becomes the law of the land in Missouri. This bill nullifies all federal gun laws that infringe on Missourians’ 2nd Amendment rights.

President Obama never misses a chance to “blame it on Bush,” and last night’s address to the nation on Syria was no exception.

The reason Obama has failed to win support military action in Syria, the president declared last night, is not because he has failed to lay out a coherent strategy — it’s because of “the terrible toll of Iraq and Afghanistan.” Obama further slammed former president George W. Bush for presiding over “a decade that put more and more war-making power in the hands of the president and more and more burdens on the shoulders of our troops, while sidelining the people’s representatives from the critical decisions about when we use force.”

President Barack Obama’s Syria address was widely panned by leading foreign policy journalists on Tuesday night, leading to an intense pushback effort by top White House spokespeople on Twitter.

In messages directed at journalists from The New York Times, Bloomberg and other outlets, the White House communications team sought to wrest control of the narrative going forward even as the speech was being criticized as among the most ineffective in the history of the American presidency.

“Tonight’s speech was very probably the least consequential vitally important speech ever,” David Rothkopf, the CEO of the Foreign Policy Group tweeted. “President [sent] crystal clear message that on Syria the thing he feels strongest about is his own ambivalence.”

“Maybe it would have been better to have postponed the speech along with the vote,” wrote Jeffrey Goldberg, the Bloomberg View columnist. “After two years of saying Assad should go, the message now is Assad can stay. We just want to take away one of his weapons systems.”

Those tweets and others, which came from some of the most influential voices in foreign policy journalism, elicited a strong and immediate pushback from the Obama administration.

White House Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes responded to Goldberg’s tweet by writing, “US position remains Assad leaving power as part of political process. But we must also act to specifically remove CW [chemical weapons] threat.”

The Obama aide made a similar effort when responding to New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, who asked: “Does it bother anyone else that the basic Obama message to dictators is: When you slaughter your people, don’t use gas.”

Wrote Rhodes, “Any slaughter is abhorrent.. Conventional attacks led us to sanction Assad, declare him illegitimate, and support opposition. CW is in distinct category. Banned by international law – threat to civilians, global security, and international order.”

While Rhodes worked on Goldberg and Kristof, White House press secretary Jay Carney tweeted quotes from Obama’s speech — “Getting the word out by all available means!,” he tweeted at one Time Magazine reporter — and Dan Pfeiffer, Obama’s assistant and senior advisor, tried to counter journalists who argued that Obama’s speech was “old news.”

“[W]e don’t assume the public follows the news as closely as leading political columnists,” Pfeiffer wrote to The Las Vegas Sun’s Jon Ralston. And to Goldberg, he tweeted, “[P]residents don’t ask for time to address columnists who follow every minute of the news, it’s for the public that doesn’t.”

The speech was plagued from the get-go because of rapidly changing developments. In the last 48 hours, Syria had accepted a plan to turn over its chemical weapons and sign an international treaty, forcing White House speechwriters to scramble on a revision of Obama’s remarks.

But even in the eyes of some in the mainstream media, the result was a fractured and uncertain speech — what NBC News political director Chuck Todd described as “two speeches”: one that was clear and concise, another that seemed to have been written days ago, before the Syrian proposal took place.

Leading minds on foreign policy were unforgiving, and panned the speech as contradictory and inconsequential.

“He should have postponed,” Goldberg told POLITICO. “Basically he said — our military is ready; John Kerry is going to Geneva, and poison gas is very bad.”

In an email to POLITICO, Rothkopf called the speech “a string of his recent arguments culminating in a punt.”

“It seems clear he wishes this would all go away and that he is very uncomfortable with the spot he finds himself,” Rothkopf wrote. “The thing he feels strongest about is his own ambivalence.”

Ceding a little ground, though not much, Phillip Gourevitch, the New Yorker staff writer, tweeted: “That it’s pure rhetoric w/no substance may be understandable w/confused state of play but it clarifies nothing.” He added: “Obama did make strong case for likely ineffectiveness of action in Syria, while declaring its necessity.”

Again, it’s the media spin cockroaches in the West Wing such as Dan Pfeiffer and failed fiction writer, author of the Cairo speech, Arab Spring purveyor, Ben Rhodes, who are directing US Mid-East policy.

A Plea for Caution From RussiaWhat Putin Has to Say to Americans About Syria
By VLADIMIR V. PUTIN
Published: September 11, 2013

MOSCOW — RECENT events surrounding Syria have prompted me to speak directly to the American people and their political leaders. It is important to do so at a time of insufficient communication between our societies.

Relations between us have passed through different stages. We stood against each other during the cold war. But we were also allies once, and defeated the Nazis together. The universal international organization — the United Nations — was then established to prevent such devastation from ever happening again.

The United Nations’ founders understood that decisions affecting war and peace should happen only by consensus, and with America’s consent the veto by Security Council permanent members was enshrined in the United Nations Charter. The profound wisdom of this has underpinned the stability of international relations for decades.

No one wants the United Nations to suffer the fate of the League of Nations, which collapsed because it lacked real leverage. This is possible if influential countries bypass the United Nations and take military action without Security Council authorization.

The potential strike by the United States against Syria, despite strong opposition from many countries and major political and religious leaders, including the pope, will result in more innocent victims and escalation, potentially spreading the conflict far beyond Syria’s borders. A strike would increase violence and unleash a new wave of terrorism. It could undermine multilateral efforts to resolve the Iranian nuclear problem and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and further destabilize the Middle East and North Africa. It could throw the entire system of international law and order out of balance.

snip

It is alarming that military intervention in internal conflicts in foreign countries has become commonplace for the United States. Is it in America’s long-term interest? I doubt it. Millions around the world increasingly see America not as a model of democracy but as relying solely on brute force, cobbling coalitions together under the slogan “you’re either with us or against us.”

But force has proved ineffective and pointless. Afghanistan is reeling, and no one can say what will happen after international forces withdraw. Libya is divided into tribes and clans. In Iraq the civil war continues, with dozens killed each day. In the United States, many draw an analogy between Iraq and Syria, and ask why their government would want to repeat recent mistakes.

No matter how targeted the strikes or how sophisticated the weapons, civilian casualties are inevitable, including the elderly and children, whom the strikes are meant to protect.

snip…he goes on…and on…

***************************************

now Putin is really rubbing O’s nose in it…and lecturing O on focusing on world peace instead of O’s warring ways…

***********************************

btw…that clip above of the parody of brainwashed Obots hit the nail on the head…about time others are finding their voice and speaking out…

James Woods continues to pound President Barack Obama on Twitter regardless what his Hollywood peers might think.
This time the veteran actor blasts the president for sharing data on Americans with another country.

The National Security Agency routinely shares raw intelligence data with Israel without removing information about Americans, The Guardian reported, citing a top-secret document it said was provided by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden.

That fired up Woods, an actor known for his intense work in films like The Onion Field, Casino and Nixon. He sent out the following tweet to alert his followers to the latest NSA news.

Report: Data on Americans shared with Israel http://usat.ly/1e32eY5 Obama: the gift from hell that keeps on giving.

‘2 Million Bikers’ roar into D.C. to honor 9/11, protest Muslim rally
…While falling short of 2 million strong, the number of participants was impressive for the hastily arranged ride that was organized in part to protest the pro-Muslim rally that many said was inappropriate for such a solemn day in U.S. history. A swath of shining chrome and steel bikes stretched about a third of a mile from the starting point at the Harley-Davidson of Washington store just outside the District in Fort Washington.
Waiting for the call to put up his kickstand, 68-year-old Jim Hearley said he rode his bike about 650 miles from Ellijay, Ga., to show his support. I had to do it. It was the patriot thing to do,” the former Marine and Vietnam veteran said, adding that the Muslim rally was what originally drew him to the ride.
“Any other day it probably wouldn’t have been as big as it is, but it pissed off a lot of veterans and a lot of Americans.”
Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/sep/11/2-million-bikers-roar-dc-honor-911-protest-muslim-/

The CIA has begun delivering weapons to rebels in Syria, ending months of delay in lethal aid that had been promised by the Obama administration, according to U.S. officials and Syrian figures. The shipments began streaming into the country over the past two weeks, along with separate deliveries by the State Department of vehicles and other gear ­ a flow of material that marks a major escalation of the U.S. role in Syria’s civil war.

The arms shipments, which are limited to light weapons and other munitions that can be tracked, began arriving in Syria at a moment of heightened tensions over threats by President Obama to order missile strikes to punish the regime of Bashar al-Assad for his alleged use of chemical weapons in a deadly attack near Damascus last month.

The arms are being delivered as the United States is also shipping new types of nonlethal gear to rebels. That aid includes vehicles, sophisticated communications equipment and advanced combat medical kits.

U.S. officials hope that, taken together, the weapons and gear will boost the profile and prowess of rebel fighters in a conflict that started about 21 / 2 years ago.

Although the Obama administration signaled months ago that it would increase aid to Syrian rebels, the efforts have lagged because of the logistical challenges involved in delivering equipment in a war zone and officials’ fears that any assistance could wind up in the hands of jihadists. Secretary of State John F. Kerry had promised in April that the nonlethal aid would start flowing “in a matter of weeks.”

The delays prompted several senior U.S. lawmakers to chide the Obama administration for not moving more quickly to aid the Syrian opposition after promising lethal assistance in June. The criticism has grown louder amid the debate over whether Washington should use military force against the Syrian regime, with some lawmakers withholding support until the administration committed to providing the rebels with more assistance.

“Still, Hillary is vulnerable to a candidate who can inspire passion and embody fundamental change, especially on the subject of economic inequality and corporate power, a subject with deep resonance among Millennial Democrats. And the candidate who best fits that description is Elizabeth Warren.

[…]

First, as a woman, Warren would drain the deepest reservoir of pro-Hillary passion: the prospect of a female president. While Hillary would raise vast sums, Dean and Obama have both shown that in the digital age, an insurgent can compete financially by inspiring huge numbers of small donations. Elizabeth Warren can do that. She’s already shown a knack for going viral. A video of her first Senate banking committee hearing, where she scolded regulators that “too-big-to-fail has become too-big-for-trial,” garnered 1 million hits on YouTube. In her 2012 Senate race, despite never before having sought elected office, she raised $42 million, more than twice as much as the second-highest-raising Democrat. After Bill Clinton and the Obamas, no other speaker at last summer’s Democratic convention so electrified the crowd.”

I’ve always considered American exceptionalism to be embodied by the words of Thomas Jefferson.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed;
And by the words of our greatest President, Abraham Lincoln.

… and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
So in that sense I totally disagree with Vladamir Putin. But I do agree with him that the way our exceptionalism has been defined by war mongering people of both parties believing that we have the right to force our way of life upon whomever we choose is absolutely wrong. It actually defeats what is exceptional about us.

I’ve always considered American exceptionalism to be embodied by the words of Thomas Jefferson.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed;

snip

___________________

I agree, gonzo, but I take exception to the gender specificity. It may seem like a small thing to some, but it’s not to me. I get that the word “men” is to be interpreted as humanity in general – or is it?- back in Jefferson’s time, women were not considered equal. They still aren’t in some ways, to some people and groups.

I didn’t meant to dilute your message or to make light of the quote. That passage by Jefferson is powerful and a favorite of mine, as well. But, I would be less than honest if I didn’t say it’s way past time to declare women equal, as well. Passing the ERA would have been nice, but as I said, many people even today don’t agree with the concept of gender equality.

If you’re a woman, hearing and reading about the rights of men all your life, with no actual mention of the rights of women, will start to piss you off.

“First, as a woman, Warren would drain the deepest reservoir of pro-Hillary passion: the prospect of a female president.”

_________________

I’m not so sure about this statement. I’m as pro-Hillary as anyone, and really want to see a female POTUS, but It’s not Warren’s time. It’s Hillary’s. She needs to wait. If she doesn’t, unless Hillary has absolutely declared that she would not even run from an oncoming bus – let alone for president, there will be quite a few Hillary loyals who won’t be able to support her, IMO.

And, regarding Warren: If the damn party tries to give Hillary the shaft again, and Warren allows herself to be used as a female Barack – to cut Hillary out of the loop again, she’s a fool. She will do herself great damage among many, who know Hillary actually won in 2008, but had the nomination stolen from her by the DNC. Using a female to give Hillary the shaft, is no better than using a half-black male to do so as they Dims did in 2008.

“First, as a woman, Warren would drain the deepest reservoir of pro-Hillary passion: the prospect of a female president.”
____________________________________________

This becomes a problem if the so called Hillary supporters are nothing but bots in drag. Warren, while a good person, smart, sharp mind, good convictions, etc, is not yet in Hillary’s league. Experience-wise, foreign policy, work in the Senate and with all branches of Congress, gravitas, respect across the aisle, etc, Warren doesn’t hold a card to Hillary. MAYBE in the view of unions, she may carry a bigger bucket that Hillary, but that is just one area of competence.

The world is at a point where a flash in the pan is not what is needed at the steering wheel. The Denver Broncos are reaping the rewards of going with the old general at QB versus the flash in the pan corporal. I don’t think that voters will be any different should Hillary decide to run in 2016…

President Obama must promise not to arm rebel forces or Syrian dictator Bashar Assad will not hand over his chemical weapons, the embattled leader told a Russian state media outlet today while demanding that Israel also surrender its nuclear arsenal.

“When we see that the U.S. genuinely stands for stability in our region, stops threatening us with military intervention and stops supplying terrorists with weapons, then we will consider it possible to finalize all necessary procedures and they will become legitimate and acceptable for Syria,” Assad told RIA News.

Obama asked Congress to postpone a vote authorizing use of military force in Syria after Russian President Vladimir Putin offered to broker a deal whereby the U.S. would not attack the Assad regime if he surrendered his chemical weapons.

Assad said that the Middle East won’t have peace until Israel also surrenders its weapons of mass destruction.

“If we really want stability in the Middle East, all the countries [in the region] must honor the agreements. And the first country to do so is Israel because it possesses nuclear, chemical and biological weapons – all types of weapons of mass destruction,”

This publication is the final authority on foreign relations matters. It is light years more credible that NYT or WashPo. It says Bambi got his ass handed to him, and that’s how it will be remembered.

Putin Scores on Syria
How He Got the Upper Hand — And How He Will Use It

By Fiona Hill
Foreign Affairs Magazine
September 11, 2013

Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Barack Obama are pictured on a video screen at the G-20.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Barack Obama are pictured on a video screen installed in the press center of the G-20 Summit in Strelna near St. Petersburg, September 5, 2013. (Grigory Dukor / Courtesy Reuters)

On Monday, September 9, Russian President Vladimir Putin made a diplomatic move that seemed to catch the entire international community, not just U.S. President Barack Obama and his team, by surprise. He seized the most dramatic moment possible — the eve of what was to be a fateful vote in the U.S. Congress on Obama’s decision to launch a targeted strike against Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad — to propose that Syria surrender its chemical weapons to an international commission headed by the United Nations. Assad quickly agreed to the proposal, at least in principle.

By the evening of September 10, after a day full of calls from every imaginable corner to pursue Putin’s plan, Obama seemed to back away from threats of imminent military action. In a live address to the nation, he requested a delay in the congressional vote, announced that Secretary of State John Kerry would meet with the Russians to hash things out, pushed for the United Nations to maintain the diplomatic pressure on Assad, and put another round of the Syrian game in motion. Putin then further pressed his advantage by demanding a promise from Washington not to attack Assad if the Syrian leader surrenders his chemical weapons.

Whether or not the Russian plan succeeds, Putin’s team will surely paint it as a diplomatic coup, a show of more finess than the Obama team has been able to muster. For one, Putin was able to capitalize on what appeared to be a gaffe by Kerry at a press conference in the United Kingdom on Monday. In response to a journalist’s question, Kerry had asserted that the only way for Assad to avoid a strike was to turn over his entire chemical arsenal. The U.S. State Department subsequently walked back Kerry’s statement, but it was then that Putin pounced by seconding the disarmament plan. In interviews, Obama suggested he had discussed the contours of the proposal with Putin when the Russian president pulled him aside at the G-20 summit. Other international players have claimed the general idea was theirs. Still others maintain the core concept had been in the diplomatic works for some time.

Whatever the actual facts, it was Putin who claimed paternity first. He was thus able to take credit as the United States and others scrambled to spin the situation in their favor. Despite giving Obama and the United States a “get out of jail free card” at home, most observers agree that, on points, Putin is the real winner of this particular round of the Syrian conflict. Indeed, in helping Obama avoid the probability of a congressional defeat, Putin has even made the U.S. president somewhat beholden to him as the next phase of the Syrian game unfolds. This is a situation that Putin relishes as a former KGB officer whose success in his job often depended on trading on favors behind the scenes. The question now is whether the United States and its allies can out-maneuver Putin to regain the diplomatic advantage. If the history of the Syrian conflict is any guide, that will not be easy. However the conflict is ultimately resolved, it is now seems more likely to be on terms laid out by Moscow than Washington.

ORIGINAL ARTICLE: September 6, 2013

After months of standing firm (and almost alone) against international intervention in Syria, by the end of August, Russian President Vladimir Putin seemed resigned to the prospect of a U.S. strike against Bashar al-Assad’s regime. To be sure, he was not happy about it, but the use of chemical weapons against civilians in a Damascus suburb appeared to have brought the current phase of the Syrian crisis to its inevitable climax. In the face of repeated U.S. and international warnings that a chemical attack was the red line for retribution, coalition strikes on Syria seemed mere days away.

Yet events after the attack unexpectedly worked in Putin’s favor. First came the British parliamentary vote blocking Prime Minister David Cameron’s initiative to join any U.S. military assault. Then came U.S. President Barack Obama’s decision to put the issue to a vote before a reluctant Congress. The French government announced that — unlike in Mali — it would not go it alone in Syria. And United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon stated that the chemical weapons inspection team he had dispatched to Syria would need time to complete its work before determining whether there was sufficient evidence for the UN to approve the use of force.

Now, as Putin hosts the G-20 summit in St. Petersburg, he sees a new opportunity for Russia. Given all parties’ clear reluctance to take assertive action, Putin believes that an attack can be averted, or, at the very least, limited to a unilateral American action. Beyond some French support, and some sideline cheering by the Turks and the Arab League, Obama — not Putin — will be out on his own. And Russia will find itself no longer isolated on Syria.

Over the past week, Putin has used a series of carefully staged public appearances and interviews to stoke skepticism about the use of force. He has pushed the idea that the Syrian rebels launched the chemical attack themselves to draw in the United States and regain ground in a civil war that they have been losing. He has engaged in cleverly orchestrated pieces of political theater, including encouraging Russian Duma deputies to reach out to members of the U.S. Congress before they vote. Putin has been judicious in calling for a review of the facts, and pointing to the importance of not doing anything rash. He has also left open the possibility that Russia could play a role in UN action against the Syrian regime — if the secretary-general obtains irrefutable proof that Assad ordered the use of chemical weapons against his own civilians. Putin has stressed the need for high evidentiary standards to avoid repeating past mistakes, such as sanctioning U.S. intervention in Iraq on the basis of faulty intelligence on WMD.

Whether these moves are sincere or not (most likely, not), they resonate with audiences in Russia, and with some outside Russia who have opposed past U.S. military actions. Putin has picked up on all the prevailing arguments against intervention and, by repeating them, staked out a position for himself as a defender of international law and principles. He has presented himself as a savvy leader who recognizes a provocation when he sees one and refuses to rise to the bait. He is poised to declare a moral victory for Russia and to take the credit if Obama backs away from intervention.

In his statements about Obama, moreover, Putin has not insulted the president personally, nor questioned his integrity directly. His jabs at the U.S. position have been deft. Even if one does not trust his motives, it is clear that Putin has at least put Obama in the awkward position of having to justify why he drew red lines on Syrian use of chemical weapons and why he cannot wait for the UN decision — and all that while Obama is in Russia, in front of a generally skeptical G-20 audience.

Putin is particularly skilled at keeping his opponents off balance. And there is no question that Obama is Putin’s opponent on the issue of Syria. All along, Putin’s goal has been to stop the United States from attacking the Syrian regime — not to protect Assad but to protect Russia. Putin wants a strong leader in Syria who can keep things under control. He wants to make sure that terrorist groups with ties to extremists in Russia’s troubled North Caucasus region do not turn from operations in Syria to strikes against Russian targets. Putin also has some experience to draw on to achieve his goals.

He counts on being underestimated and discounted — dismissed as the slouchy “bored kid at the back of the classroom” (as Obama described him in a news conference on August 9). This is an image Putin has cultivated for a very long time. As a bored kid in Leningrad in the 1960s and 1970s, Putin skulked at the back of classrooms but was energized in his free time by his pursuit of judo. He became extremely accomplished in the sport — competing with distinction at the regional and national levels. Putin frequently underscores how much he benefitted from the qualities of judo. Naturally hotheaded and scrappy, the young Putin learned discipline through studying judo; it taught him self-restraint. His training focused on how to leverage his opponents’ strengths against them, and how to wait for the right moment to capitalize on their missteps. The real skill in judo is keeping the opponent perpetually off balance, not roughly pushing him down to the mat. Finesse, not force, earns points with the judges. This ability was a valuable asset once Putin joined the KGB and needed to, literally, stand and watch quietly in the shadows, waiting for someone to screw up.

Putin knows what he is doing. He stands back while others blunder in and act in the heat of the moment. He needles and riles his opponents so they trip themselves up and do his work for him. Putin intends to win this particular round of his sparring match over Syria on points. A decision against using force in Syria, an embarrassed Obama, the prospect of a unilateral U.S. intervention launched without even the imprimatur of the U.S. Congress — all that can be spun as a Russian victory if Putin keeps his cool. Against the backdrop of the G-20 summit, the international community will be the judge of whether Putin or Obama has made the most skillful moves.

I have been off the blog working on a paper on this Syria situation. Here is the introduction and chapter 7

-INTRODUCTION-

I am a retired chief negotiator for a labor intensive Fortune 300 company. During the course of my 30 year career I handled several hundred negotiations. I majored in foreign affairs at Annapolis. Clearly there are many similarities between the negotiations that take place in collective bargaining and diplomatic affairs.

I believe that negotiation is chess not poker. Mindful of that, I have monitored the negotiation strategy, tactics and results of President Barack Obama in the context of the Syria situation–with sinking heart. For if you examine the record as a whole it becomes clear that Mr. Obama and his team lost control of the process, exposed this country to unnecessary risks and failed to achieve an optimal result.

Therefore, the question is what if anything can we learn from this experience, and more specifically what could Mr. Obama have done differently to achieve a better outcome. That is an important question because he will be president for 3 more years. And, despite the sparks of humor I will inject into this otherwise tedious piece, I wish him only the best. That said, here is my answer to that question:

1. THE ART OF THE POSSIBLE

7. READING YOUR ADVERSARY: in any negotiation it is wise to learn everything you can about you adversary. This will require a thorough investigation, and meeting with him personally to draw your own impressions. But in the scheme of things, three (3) questions are primary: i) Who is the decision-maker? ii) How does he operate? iii) What are his vital interests? If you cannot answer those questions with reasonable certainty, then you are not prepared to negotiate.

In the case of Syria, Mr. Obama failed to properly identify the decision-maker. He knew Assad was his adversary, but he believed Vladimir Putin was his friend. He failed to realize that Putin was not only his adversary, but the one pulling Assad’s strings. This myopia stems from his excessive reliance on personal relationships rather than interest based bargaining to advance his objectives. Therefore, when Putin brought him a last minute offer on Syria, he was inclined to view it in terms of the collaborative relationship they had enjoyed in the past where Russia’s interests were compatible with our own, e.g. nuclear arms reduction, rather than in terms of the competitive relationship which exists between us with respect to Syria. In that case he might have told himself: “Beware of Greeks bearing gifts.”

In the case of Syria, Mr. Obama failed to understand how Vladimir Putin operates. It begins and ends with who he is. When I look at Vladimir Putin, I see Bismarck, the Iron Chancellor of Prussia, the unifier of Germany, the ardent nationalist, the master of real politick—in sum, everything Mr. Obama is not. A man like Putin would never adopt the kind of cloud cuckoo land foreign policy that Mr. Obama has pursued in the Middle East to the detriment of his country, any more than Bismarck would. And like Bismarck, Mr. Putin is perfectly capable of the tactical brilliance we saw here, where he devised a stratagem that rescued Obama from a political problem in America, namely a no vote by Congress, while preventing Obama from damaging to Russian interests in Syria. It is like Bismarck’s response when he was asked about Africa and laid his hands on a map and said France is here, Russia is here, and Germany is here. This is my center of gravity.

In the case of Syria, Mr. Obama fails to comprehend the vital interests that Russia has at stake in Syria which compel Putin to support Assad. Obama realizes the more obvious ones such as economic ties, and the Russian quest for a warm water port which goes back all the way back to Tsar Peter the Great. Those interests can be addressed easily enough through diplomatic negotiations.

But there is third interest that cannot be resolved in that venue, because like Israel’s fear of the Iranian bomb, it is existential. In other words, it goes to the very survival of his nation. It is the rational fear of geopolitical collapse across the width and breadth of the old Soviet Union, if the Muslim extremists who comprise a significant part of the rebel force take over Syria. The predicate for this fear is the two bloody wars Russia has fought over the last twenty years against Muslim separatists in Chechnya, a Muslim region in the southwest corner of Russia.

It therefore follows that when Mr. Obama pursues policies designed to topple the Assad regime and replace them with Muslim extremists he threatens the very survival of Russia. I am sure Putin has mentioned this concern to Obama more than once, but whether Obama comprehends and appreciates its importance I cannot say. But the one thing I can say with confidence is if Obama hopes to depose Assad without a major confrontation with Russia he had better be thinking about some other way to prevent the militants from taking over Syria, and developing an alternative framework which provides stability for Russia. It is the kind of problem Austrian Diplomat Karl Metternich dealt with successfully in the aftermath of the Napoleonic War and the solution he forged based on the principle of real politick endured 100 years. Henry Kissinger is the expert on this.

A newspaper article about the cornfield White House Dossier turned up yesterday 🙂
The Exeter Corn Maze is set to open in less than two weeks and with an all new design it’s sure to be one of Barry County’s prime attractions this fall. This year’s design presents America’s Voice to Congress….http://www.cassville-democrat.com/story/2002731.html

I’ve been saying for months now that the “Extraordinary Measures” that the Treasury is taking to stay below the Debt Ceiling included the Looting of Equity in The Government Pension Plan…

Many have chided me, many have scoffed, “Linky or Stinky”…well here it is.

If you have a Govt Pension you should be taking to the streets about right now…

From the story…

Back on May 17–when the Treasury said the debt first hit $16,699,396,000,000–Treasury Secretary Jack Lew sent House Speaker John Boehner a letter indicating that the Treasury would begin using “extraordinary measures” to allow the government to continue borrowing money without exceeding the legal limit of $16,699,421,095,673.60.

“In total, the extraordinary measures currently available free up approximately $260 billion in headroom under the limit, as described below,” said an appendix to Lew’s letter.

Among the “extraordinary measures” Lew said he could take to create this “headroom” under the debt limit were: 1) not investing new money from the Civil Service Retirement and Disability Fund (CSRDF) in U.S. Treasury securities, which he said would create $6.4 billion in “headroom” per month, 2) not reinvesting $58 billion ion Treasury Securities held by the CSRDF that would be maturing and not reinvesting $16 billion in interest owed to the fund, which would create $74 billion in headroom, 3) suspending the routine daily reinvestment of $160 billion in special Treasury securities held by the Federal Employees’ Retirement System Thrift Savings Plan, which would create another $160 billion in headroom, and 4) suspending the routine daily reinvestment of Treasury securities held by the government’s own Exchange Stabilization Fund, which would create another $23 billion in headroom.

On Aug. 26, Lew sent Boehner another letter stating: “Based on our latest estimates, extraordinary measures are projected to be exhausted in the middle of October.”

Between now and then, Congress will need to approve legislation to fund the government past the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30, decide whether to permit Obamacare funding in that legislation, and decide whether to authorize President Obama to use military force in Syria.

During that time, if Lew’s prediction to Boehner is correct, the Treasury will be able to use “extraordinary measures” to keep the federal debt from rising even as little as $25 million…

“… all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights …”
freespirit September 12 at 3:33 pm
“… I take exception to the gender specificity…. “men” is to be interpreted as humanity in general – or is it?….

You’re absolutely right, freespirit, to point out that “men” in Jefferson’s time – and well beyond his time – meant just that: men only, and not women. And “men” was not humanity in general, either, because young people and children were not included in the term. A woman’s place was in the home taking care of the children, so she was on a par with them. In fact, since Jefferson was a slaveholder (albeit a nice one), one can even say that “men” for him did not even include all men either…

Bill of rights? Those were for men only too. It was only when the 9th amendment was used to win a woman’s right to supervise what was going on in her own body (Roe v Wade) that any questions were raised about the right of privacy protected by that amendment, and now we have the government spying on our emails and phone calls without warrants. Men care more about their 2nd amendment rights than about the 9th.

And extending on the same theme, we have right-to-life crazies who claim that fetuses have constitutional rights in the womb that supersede those of the woman bearing the fetus. So, in their eyes, an anonymous fetus gets the benefit of constitutional protection and rights, but a woman doesn’t.

And extending still further, “a man’s home is his castle” means just that: the man is the head of the household, period. In the 19th century, anything that went on inside a man’s home was off limits to outside censorship, even if his actions resulted in the death of wife or children. Everything in a man’s home was his property, and his wife was his chattel.

Thirteenth amendment abolishing slavery? For male slaves, you mean. The 19th amendment was ratified 55 years after the 13th amendment. In the meantime, Sojourner Truth spoke many times about how she didn’t have the right to vote and thus “freedom” was an empty word for her. And even since the 19th amendment, a housewife’s work is not paid though it is sometimes involuntary, which violates the 13th amendment.

There’s no doubt that “it’s a man’s world” and has been since time immemorial. But things can change. In this millennium of the Woman, things are changing in other countries and I can feel a change coming in the U.S. too. We absolutely must get a woman elected to the presidency, and this is where I stop pulling for Hillary only.

There are at least a dozen qualified women of different stripes for whom I would be willing to pull the proverbial lever. You, TheRock, moononpluto express your doubts about Warren, for example, but she too is on my list. If she runs and defeats Hillary or is favored by the party elite over Hillary, I won’t go pouting to the Republican side like I did in 2008 unless there is evidence of cheating or low blows on her part. And even in that case, I wouldn’t vote against Warren unless the Republicans put up a better woman.

Men are out of the picture now, in my book. The first to put up a woman gets my vote. Does that sound mindless? For Christ’s sake, we’ve got to put an end to this ”man’s world”!!

If you think the Obama health law is only for the uninsured and you won’t be affected, you’re in for a surprise next time you go to the doctor. Be prepared for questions unrelated to why you are seeking medical help ­ questions that you don’t want to answer.

Whether you’re at the dermatologist or the cardiologist, you’ll likely be asked: “Are you sexually active? If so, do you have one partner, multiple partners or same-sex partners?”

Doctors are being turned into government agents, where they’re pressured financially to ask questions they consider inappropriate and unnecessary and violate their Hippocratic Oath to keep patients’ records confidential.

Going to the doctor can be embarrassing. But for your own good, you confide in your doctor, as you wouldn’t anyone else. What is happening here is different.

“This is nasty business,” says Dr. Adam Budzikowski, a New York cardiologist, who called the sex question “insensitive, stupid and very intrusive.” He could not think of an occasion when a cardiologist would need such information.

Doctors and hospitals who don’t comply with the federal government’s electronic health records requirements forego incentive payments now and face financial penalties from Medicare and Medicaid starting in 2015. The Department of Health and Human Services has already paid out over $12.7 billion in incentives to doctors and hospitals.

Dr. Richard Amerling, a nephrologist and associate professor of medicine at Albert Einstein Medical College, explains that your medical record should be “a story created by you and your doctor solely for your treatment and benefit.” But the Obama administration’s electronic record requirements are turning it “into an interrogation, and the data will not be confidential.”

500,000 strong) indicate a different story about who the bad guys are than what we hear from Obama’s Administration. Apparently all the pictures and information were provided to our State Department by the rebel forces. It’s like asking Eric Holder’s “Injustice” Department to investigate the NSA, IRS, etc. When in troublle, ask your buddies to seek the truth…

Men are out of the picture now, in my book. The first to put up a woman gets my vote. Does that sound mindless? For Christ’s sake, we’ve got to put an end to this ”man’s world”!!
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You make some compelling points, Jezwezey. I guess when it comes to politics and government, it’s necessary to prioritize one’s battles. The thought of the Dem elite throwing Hillary under the bus, again and selecting Warren or anyone else as the nom is outrageous, and would be confirmation of their absolute power and their total corruption. And, it’s not about Hillary – it’s about supporting the will of the voters. In a primary against Hillary, Warren wouldn’t stand a chance – unless party elite rigged the game, as they did in 2008. If that were the case, and if Warren lowered herself to Obama’s standard, allowing and facilitating the subversion of democratic process in order to steal the nomination for herself, as Obama did for himself in 2008, she just would not be someone I could support. On the other hand, If Hillary were not shoved under the bus, but legitimately decided not to run, I could support Warren as the nominee.

I recognize that it’s naive to expect the Dems, or any party, for that matter, to be principled and/or to support democratic process, but what they did in 2008 was intolerable. They have damn near ruined this country, and really need to be taught a lesson. The process needs to be reformed. The people need to elect their nominee, not have him or her selected by the party elite.

I agree jeswezey, that it’s way past time for a woman to be POTUS. We need more women in every elected position. That said, as much as I support women, I won’t vote based solely on gender. I can think of a few popular female pols for whom I could not and would not vote – either because my views are too dissimilar from theirs, or because they lack sufficient intelligence and/or integrity. The last thing women need is for the first female president to be as big a disaster as the first (half) black president has been.

As Iowahawk ingeniously summed it up, Putin is “now just basically doing donuts in Obama’s front yard.” It’s not just that he can stitch him up at the G-8, G-20, Gee-don’t-tell-me-you’re-coming-back-for-more, and turn the leader of the free world into the planet’s designated decline-and-fall-guy, but he can slough off crappy third-rate telepromptered mush better than you community-organizer schmucks, too. Let’s take it as read that Putin didn’t write this himself any more than Obama wrote that bilge he was drowning in on Tuesday night, when he took to the airwaves to argue in favor of the fierce urgency of doing something about gassed Syrian moppets but not just yet. Both guys are using writers, but Putin’s

Unbeknownst to the public, Secretary of State John Kerry made a secret trip to Damascus Thursday to meet directly with Syrian President Bashar Assad. White House Dossier has obtained a transcript of the meeting. In this exclusive report, we present it to you in full.

This is hysterically funny. I don’t know which is better…the look on Giran’s face when CNN’s Baldwin shuts her down when she starts her voter-suppression meme…or the look on Baldwin’s face at the end (priceless…such a “Sheesh, will you shut up” look) towards the end of the video.

WASHINGTON — President Obama will not insist on a United Nations resolution threatening to use force to ensure that Syria lives up to its commitment to turn over chemical weapons, but will seek other tangible consequences for Syria if it does not comply, senior administration officials said Friday.

Although Mr. Obama reserves the right to order a punitive military strike on his own without United Nations backing if Syria reneges, the officials said he understood that Russia, because of its veto power in the Security Council, would never allow a resolution that authorized such a use of force.

France, which has been America’s strongest ally in the push to punish Syria for an Aug. 21 chemical weapons attack on civilians, this week proposed that a Security Council resolution invoke Chapter 7, a clause that allows United Nations members to use military action to enforce its provisions. Mr. Obama essentially is conceding that he cannot overcome Russian opposition, but he believes that a resolution must have teeth in it, and he will not agree to Syria’s demand that he renounce force altogether.

Instead, the officials said, the Obama administration will seek a Security Council resolution that builds in other measures to enforce a deal with the government of President Bashar al-Assad, possibly including sanctions or other penalties. The administration will give negotiations now under way with the Russians a couple of weeks to see if they have any traction.

The position laid out by the officials, who insisted on anonymity to discuss diplomatic negotiations, could remove one obstacle in a difficult three-way geopolitical dance with Russia and Syria.

The officials described the position of the Obama administration as Secretary of State John Kerry and Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov conducted a second day of negotiations in Geneva. Administration officials said the discussions had been serious enough to convince them that the Russians were not simply playing games, but they added that there was no guarantee that they could resolve other disagreements on the shape of an eventual deal.

Mr. Obama expressed cautious optimism after a meeting with the visiting emir of Kuwait, Amir Sabah al-Sabah. “I shared with the emir my hope that the negotiations that are currently taking place between Secretary of State Kerry and Foreign Minister Lavrov in Geneva bear fruit,” the president said. “But I repeated what I’ve said publicly, which is that any agreement needs to be verifiable and enforceable.”

The administration has not laid out publicly what would constitute verifiable and enforceable, and officials on Friday left open the possibility that there might be an acceptable alternative to a Security Council resolution, although they said they could not imagine what that would be at the moment. Verification, they said, cannot simply be a vague commitment, but a concrete process.

They flatly rejected Russian and Syrian demands that the United States forswear possible military action, because they said it was that threat that forced Moscow and Damascus to the table in the first place. While they expressed wariness about a negotiating process that drags on, they said talks served as a deterrent of their own because Mr. Assad presumably would not use chemical weapons in the interim.

…………………………….

The Presidential Authority in tatters, seriously damaged the office of POTUS on an unbelievable scale.

This is hysterically funny. I don’t know which is better…the look on Giran’s face when CNN’s Baldwin shuts her down when she starts her voter-suppression meme…or the look on Baldwin’s face at the end (priceless…such a “Sheesh, will you shut up” look) towards the end of the video.

Talk about delusional.
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You’re right. It’s really funny. Voter suppression is the ONLY explanation she will accept as reason for her defeat.

We know all about some voter suppression, votes not being counted, votes being removed from one candidate and granted to another, caucus fraud cancelling out popular vote, you name it. The Pubs have historically taken election fraud to a whole new level, but 2008 proved that they’re amateurs compared to Obama-Dims.

Nothing was done about it in 2008. That would have been a good time for any and all Dem candidates or potential candidates to begin to take voter fraud seriously, and address these issues with their secretaries of state and the election commission. I’m guessing that none of Obama’s supporters did so. I know, that’s not totally relevant to this discussion, but still worth noting.

What’s amazing about the Colorado recall election is that the conservatives had a fraction of the money the Dems did – yet they won.

Yep, Moon. The Unions are not happy with what they helped Obama wrought. They think it’s fine for the rest of the country to have to deal with Ocare, but they want out of the deal. No doubt, they felt that given the massive amounts of money the unions contribute to Dem candidates each year and the mega-massive amount they gave Obama, he would grant their wish. But, alas, they just found out what Admin has repeatedly said, “Obama cannot be trusted.”

Short excerpt from the article:

“They also make a raw political argument that they helped the Obama administration pass the law, and they deserve to be taken care of during implementation. “This is especially stinging because other stakeholders have repeatedly received successful interpretations for their respective grievances,” the three unions wrote in their letter. “Most disconcerting of course is last week’s huge accommodation for the employer community—extending the statutorily mandated ‘December 31, 2013’ deadline for the employer mandate and penalties.”

that’s the Dem party line…voter suppression is why the two dems were recalled…has nothing to do with guns

…I happened to hear Debbie Wasserman Shultz pushing the same line to Chuck Todd…and he almost fell off his chair and laughed in her face…he kept asking her if she was serious and she kept pushing the same line…

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btw…does Debbie ever look in a mirror and see herself…her hair was in tight, tight ringlets plastered close to her head…she looked like she just walked out of the shower…and it was not a good look…

Men are out of the picture now, in my book. The first to put up a woman gets my vote. Does that sound mindless? For Christ’s sake, we’ve got to put an end to this ”man’s world”!!

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Amen to that!

I won’t believe America is even in the league of equal rights with countries like Germany, England and others until we elect the best candidate, be it a woman or a man. If Hillary runs again and is the best candidate, yet is pushed aside AGAIN for a lesser candidate, then my hair will be on fire and I will be even more enraged.

2. UNDERSTANDING DIPLOMACY: During the 2008 primary, candidate Obama was asked whether he would agree to sit down with the leader of Iran in the first year of his presidency and resolve our differences. Those differences included the seizure of our embassy a quarter century before, the murder of our ambassador, the development of a nuclear bomb, the threat to annihilate of ally Israel, the sponsorship of terrorism—insignificant matters like that. On the other hand, we fought against China in the Korean War, and a quarter century later President Richard Nixon was able to resume diplomatic relations with that hostile nation. Our policy of containment was shattered by the Iraq war so the question was apt.

Rather than reflect on the matter, Mr. Obama blurted out the answer “Yes!” By contrast, Hillary Clinton gave a much more nuanced answer which indicated an interest in exploring the possibility, but first testing the water to ensure that such meetings would be productive, and would not be used simply for propaganda purposes. In sum, her response reflected a mature understanding of diplomacy, while Mr. Obama’s unconditional yes reflected naïveté. After Mr. Obama became President, his minions reached out for the Supreme Leader and requested just such a meeting. Contrary to his assumption, the Supreme Leader refused. He had more to gain by not resolving our conflict. Obama missed that point. He seems to believe that diplomacy is based on personal relationships as opposed to the clash of national interests. This is one of the problems he has in dealing with Syria.

During the 2008 primary, Mr. Obama was also asked how he perceived his role as president. He responded that he did not see himself serving as a chief operating officer in a company, who would dirty his hands to make the system work. Rather, he saw himself in the position of CEO, and a demigod far removed from the actual operation providing high level direction and inspiration. The Nobel Committee reinforced this delusion by awarding him the Nobel Prize for doing nothing. After he became President, Obama went on a world tour. He apologized to dictators for the United States and set himself up as a global community organizer soliciting their grievances against us, whether real or imagined. Then he delivered his Cairo speech which mainstream media equated to the Gettysburg Address. Therein, he bid the lion to lay down with the lamb, compared Israel to the Nazis and blew a dog whistle to Muslim extremism. Finally, when Mr. Obama toppled the Libyan government and opened a new breeding ground for terrorism, he announced a bold new concept of world leadership called leading from behind.

When Dr. Kissinger was asked to comment upon the stellar result of Obama’s counterintuitive approach to foreign policy, he provided a crisp one word answer: “weakness!” You do not need to study Machiavelli to know what that means. It means a loss of leverage, a diminished capacity to lead the world and a resulting inability to influence future events to America’s advantage. This does not seem to bother Mr. Obama however. He grins & skips along to yet another misadventure, secure in the notion that whatever he does mainstream media will cover for him.

The White House and its army of paid propagandists (imagine what the paid tweeters and blog “activists” were up to) were busy last night trying to turn the disaster into a delight:
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Big media has zero interest in having an honest discussion on what is going on in Syria. That is why I am taking the time to write this paper. The reason for their reticence is clear. They are nothing more than couriers defending the royal court and manipulating public opinion in order to preserve their own power and privilege. That is the conclusion of Glenn Greenwald of The Guardian, who hues to the older tradition of journalism embodied by the French writer Emile Zola—a tradition which dares to speak truth to power, and is conspicuous by its absence in the corporate enterprises of NBC, CNN, ABC, CBS, NYT, WashPo. Their blind support of Mr. Obama is a matter of record and it determines what they ignore, what they report and how they report it. Thus, if the American People wish to know what is really happening in Syria, then they must look to beyond big media and its group think narrative, to credible sources on the internet, world media and Foreign Affairs Magazine who offer the truth.)

Me: …. The first to put up a woman gets my vote. Does that sound mindless?….

freespirit September 13, 2013 at 9:41 am: …. The last thing women need is for the first female president to be as big a disaster as the first (half) black president has been.

Shadowfax September 14, 2013 at 1:28 am: If Hillary runs again and is the best candidate, yet is pushed aside AGAIN for a lesser candidate, then my hair will be on fire and I will be even more enraged.

You are both saying that my impatience is indeed mindless. I concur, at least on the face of it.

But you are also assuming that no one “less than” Hillary will do. I said that there were “at least a dozen” women of different stripes whom I would support for the presidency; but that doesn’t mean I think there are hundreds or thousands of them, or just any woman against any man.

I’ve also said in recent years that my decision to vote McCain in 2008 was based on three-tier criteria: (i) Character, (ii) Competence and (iii) Issues, in that order of priority and importance.

At the time (2008), had I looked at the issues alone, as they were presented in the campaigns, I would have voted Obama over McCain. In fact, if I looked at the issues alone, I might even have voted Obama over Hillary.

However, issues are fickle matters that are treated differently during a campaign (in poetry) from when actually in office (in prose). For example, a presidential nominee may talk a lot about his pro-life stance in a campaign, knowing that, once in office, there is nothing he can do about abortion because it comes under states rights.

In 2008, I judged both McCain and Palin positively in matters of Character (or personal integrity) and Competence (or leadership abilities – how to lead the people, the government, and deal with Congress), so I made up my mind to vote for them especially when McCain toned down his bellicosity.

On the other hand, Obama’s lack of Character (corruption being the antithesis of character) and Competence (demagogy not substituting for leadership skills) meant I simply could not believe his stance on any issue and could not support him or vote for him anyway.

Looking forward to 2016, I will not be befogged by the issues and stances. Hillary has now come out in favor of gay marriage, for example, which makes no sense to me but does not change my view of her personal integrity and her leadership skills. Furthermore, marriage comes within states rights and I don’t care what a candidate for federal office thinks of it. Hillary can make a lot of such “mistakes” on the issues, if they are indeed mistakes, and I will still support her for her proven Character and Competence.

None of the women (both D and R) on my list can be faulted for lack of Character and their Competence will be proven or disproven on the campaign trail. The issues can go fuck themselves: I have said before that I am a socialist, which corresponds to nothing in the American political market anyway – not to be equated with “liberals” – and I am as ready to vote on the right as on the left on the issues. Palin, Bachmann and Haley are three of my favorites. Gillibrand and Warren are also on my list, though Hillary is my girl.

I strongly feel, furthermore, that none of the women on my list could come close to being the disaster that the Boob has been. In fact, coming in on the heels of the Boob, it will feel like the difference between night and day, and the first woman’s success even if relative will be welcomed by the country and have a lasting effect.

Among the men who might be running in 2016, so far, I like Joe Biden, but I think he should spend his final years in stand-up comedy where he could make a lot of money just being himself. There are only Chris Christie and Andrew Cuomo that I would seriously consider, but would not vote for either of them if they were running against any of my women. This is where I start to get mindless again. I might not be alive for 2020, so I want it to happen in 2016.

A controversial Homeland Security advisor who was recently promoted to senior fellow is a self-declared Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and Mohamed Morsi supporter. Elibiary, who was appointed to the Department of Homeland Security Advisory Council by then-Secretary Janet Napolitano in 2010, tweeted Thursday that his appointment was renewed and his position elevated.

Aside from that, I don’t see why a member or supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood shouldn’t be admitted to an advisory council as long as his opinions are known to the council. The CIA gets its best information on such bodies from people who are actually members of those entities. If we were to exclude them, we would be working blind, literally.

I’ve been inspired to conduct another post card shower upon Congress, so just have time for a couple of disconnected thoughts.
Kerry negotiating with Putin. How long ago was it that Boehner would not meet with Russians here? 2 weeks?
Last night Scott Pelley referred to Obama’s cave in on striking Syria as … a compromise.
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While I’m not prepared to make a full statement, it seems to me that tee vee has revamped its crawl message displayed during news. For one thing, the 6:30 PM news M-F seem to have done away with any semblance of a crawl.
6ABC this morning had nothing about Pretty Boy or Kerry in theirs. What it did have was a smidgeon for local Big Stories, but was mostly for weather, sports, and lottery results. Is 6 ABC following another edict from White House Productions?

Now, here’s a pundit who’s saying some “crazy” things I said in my first post, perhaps more intelligently:
**********
Get used to President Hillary Clinton
By KATHLEEN PARKER, Columnist

Three years out and you’d think the deed was done: Madame President Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton.

She’s everywhere these days because: (a) It’s August; (b) Reporters are bored with President Obama; (c) Reporters are bored with Joe Biden; (d) Clintons are never boring.

Correct.

Op-ed columns are filled with advice about what Hillary needs to do. She needs a narrative. A message. It can’t be that she’s a Clinton or a woman. It has to be …

What? Here’s a thought: She can save the world.

Yes, all right, perhaps a trifle hyperbolic, but hear me out. And keep in mind that this works only as a long game. We may not live to see salvation but one has to start somewhere. Thus far, invasions, bunker-busting mega-bombs and killer drones seem not to be having the desired effect.

Let’s begin with a working (and provable) premise: Women, if allowed to be fully equal to men, will bring peace to the planet. This is not so far-fetched a notion. One, men have been at it for thousands of years, resulting in millions and millions of corpses. Two, countries where women are most oppressed and abused are also the least stable.

Three, as women become more empowered, especially financially, countries become more stable. When women have money, they can feed their families, get health care, educate their children, start businesses and so on. The ripple effect is stronger families, stronger communities, and ultimately saner nations.

This fact, reinforced by numerous economic studies, has not escaped the attention of corporate America, which is investing heavily to reach women in developing countries. As Muhtar Kent, the CEO of Coca-Cola, put it: “Women are already the most dynamic and fastest-growing economic force in the world today.”

What does this have to do with Hillary? Quite a bit.

Rewinding the tape to 1995 at the U.N. Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, then-first lady Hillary Clinton empowered women as never before with just a few words: “Human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights, once and for all.”

Imagine that. Well, of course, we can imagine that. Our Founding Fathers created the instruments to codify this concept, even if it took a while to imprint on our psyches and to be reflected in our laws. But elsewhere, in places where women are tortured, abused, sold into slavery and disfigured, all to the “glory” of men, it was a trumpet blast from heaven’s gate that caused the earth to tremble: Women are human beings, too.

How do you say “wow” in Lingala?

At the time, it was a revolutionary statement and helps explain why Hillary is one of the most recognized and revered individuals in the world.

While Americans obsess about Hillary’s hair and married life, others have been studying her for inspiration. To millions, she is a role model and a warrior for women’s right to self-determination. As secretary of state, she continued the work of her predecessors, Condoleezza Rice and Madeleine Albright, who first insisted that women’s rights be part of our foreign policy, and then pushed further. Under Hillary’s watch, Obama made permanent the Office of Global Women’s Issues and appointed longtime Hillary colleague Melanne Verveer as ambassador-at-large.

These strides in soft diplomacy may get less ink than, say, John Kerry’s progress toward Middle East peace talks, but they are no less important in the longer term. Far newsier than yet another round of “peace talks,” necessary though they be, are the implications of the global explosion in women’s economic and, therefore, political power.

Whether one likes or dislikes Hillary, few dispute that she has matured in her public role. Her resume can be topped by few and the symbolic power of electing a woman president — especially this woman — can’t be overestimated. Many doubtless shudder at the prospect of Hillary Clinton as the most powerful person in the world, but we’ve done worse. [we certainly have!] For what it’s worth, many in the Bush White House said privately they hoped Hillary would win because they felt she was the better prepared to handle international challenges.

Whatever transpires during the next three years, we can be sure the world’s women are watching closely. In 2007 when I traveled through the Middle East with then-first lady Laura Bush, every woman I met was riveted by the U.S. presidential election and wanted to talk about only this:Will Hillary win?

In 2008, it seemed possible. In 2016, barring a Benghazi surprise, it seems probable.

Government Seeking Inclusion of ‘Social and Behavioral’ Data in Health Records

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) wants to require health care providers to include “social and behavioral” data in Electronic Health Records (EHR) and to link patient’s records to public health departments, it was announced last week.

Health care experts say the proposal raises additional privacy concerns over Americans’ personal health information, on top of worries that the Obamacare “data hub” could lead to abuse by bureaucrats and identify theft.

The CMS currently covers 100 million people through Medicare, Medicaid, and the Children’s Hospital Insurance Program and is tasked with running Obamacare.

According to a solicitation posted by the Department of Health and Human Services on Sept. 4, the CMS is commissioning the National Academy of Sciences to study how best to add social and behavioral factors to electronic health record reporting.

The agency said adding social and behavioral data to patients’ online records will improve health care.

“Increasing EHR adoption has the potential to improve health and health care quality,” the contract’s statement of work (SOW) reads. “Parallel advances in analytic tools applied to such records are fueling new approaches to discovering determinants of population health.”

The project sets out to identify “core data standards for behavioral and social determinants of health to be included in EHRs.”

WASHINGTON, September 14, 2013 ­­ Three leaders in the fight to overthrow Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad are President Barack Obama, who has positioned American military forces for a possible strike; CIA director John Brennan, who is openly supplying weapons and advisors to the Free Syria Army (FSA); Egyptian physician and al-Qaeda commander Ayman al-Zawahri, who has now reportedly declared himself at the helm of the al-Nusra front in Syria.

Al-Zawahri is wanted for alleged connections to the September 11 attacks and Osama bin Laden. According to London’s “The Telegraph,” he called yesterday for new attacks on the United States to “bleed America economically.”

If this doesn’t qualify Obama and Brennan for indefinite detention under the 2012 NDAA section 1021 for having “substantially supported al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces,” then it is difficult to imagine what does.

The reality dawning on even the most casual observers of this circus is that the Obama Administration’s sales pitch for an attack on Syria, and by proxy Russia, has turned the “war on terror” into a bloody exercise in absurdity.

As public and international support for an attack on Syria crumbles, all that remains is the State Department’s diplomatic crumbs on the floor, negotiations with Vladimir Putin, and ongoing weapons shipments to terrorists.

Actually, there is good reason to believe that social and behavioral data will improve the research base and thereby health care, especially of preventive care, and at the same time provide a better basis for establishing insurance premiums – as long as you accept the idea that, for example, people who have a diabetic pre-condition should pay a higher premium. The French health insurance system makes no such distinction among people with various pre-conditions, nor does the British national system. But that’s no reason why the US systems have to be all-inclusive, same rate for everybody.

Anyway, aside from the premiums for pre-conditions, social and behavioral data are still fruitful resources for research and could bring preventive medicine up to snuff.

…Al-Zawahri is wanted for alleged connections to the September 11 attacks and Osama bin Laden. According to London’s “The Telegraph,” he called yesterday for new attacks on the United States to “bleed America economically.”

If this doesn’t qualify Obama and Brennan for indefinite detention under the 2012 NDAA section 1021 for having “substantially supported al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces,” then it is difficult to imagine what does.

The reality dawning on even the most casual observers of this circus is that the Obama Administration’s sales pitch for an attack on Syria, and by proxy Russia, has turned the “war on terror” into a bloody exercise in absurdity….

jeswezey
September 14, 2013 at 6:04 am
Me: …. The first to put up a woman gets my vote. Does that sound mindless?….

freespirit September 13, 2013 at 9:41 am: …. The last thing women need is for the first female president to be as big a disaster as the first (half) black president has been.

Shadowfax September 14, 2013 at 1:28 am: If Hillary runs again and is the best candidate, yet is pushed aside AGAIN for a lesser candidate, then my hair will be on fire and I will be even more enraged.
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You are both saying that my impatience is indeed mindless. I concur, at least on the face of it.

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I wouldn’t use the term, ‘mindless’ but I would say that voting for gender instead of competence isn’t much different than voting for race. The difference is that Hillary was the candidate with the most competence, and she was cheated out of the nomination JUST because of her gender.

I love Hillary, I can’t deny that…and I do think she is the MOST competent political person we could hope for in 2016…but if she decides to not run (God forbid), then I will not be looking for any ol’ woman that will run, but the MOST competent person.

We each have our own view of what’s important and I won’t argue with a man that is fighting for women’s rights. It’s just not the road I will go down for President. However, I do use that strategy when voting in the state elections. I don’t normally know many of these folks, so I do vote gender then.

“Actually, there is good reason to believe that social and behavioral data will improve the research base and thereby health care, especially of preventive care, and at the same time provide a better basis for establishing insurance premiums…”
****
I agree that the data would be good for research, however, unlike “real” research where there are strict rules for protecting the patient’s identity; this data will essentially be available to anyone. The Obama admin. has shown nothing but contempt for the Fourth amendment and the rule of law and the abuse potential for “social/behavioral” medical data is huge.

From WSWS:

“FISA records document “daily violations” by government spy agencies”

FISA court records declassified Tuesday show that government spy agencies systematically violated court orders in order to conduct illegal spying on Americans, while lying in court as to the extent of their activities. Previously secret rulings show that the Obama administration was found to be committing “daily violations” of court orders related to its spying activities.

These records came to light as a result of litigation under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). (The files can be accessed here.) The Obama administration fought to keep the documents secret, maintaining that their release would result in “serious and exceptionally grave damage to the national security of the United States.”
(snip)
The FISA court is a “court” in name only. It convenes in secret, with “judges” presiding over a “courtroom” in which only one side—the government side—is present. For targeted individuals and groups, there is no right to be present in court or even to be notified of the court’s rulings.

All of the court’s records are sealed, and if a person should for some reason find out about one of the court’s rulings, a gag order can be entered prohibiting that person from disclosing that information to anyone else. The court bases its rulings on secret laws and secret interpretations of the Constitution. There is no right to an attorney, no jury, no trial, and no appeal.
(snip)
The court records show that the government systematically lied to the FISA court about all of the essential features of this program. These lies date, according to one court record, “since the earliest days” of the program in 2006.
(snip)
Having obtained the FISA court’s authorization for the program, the NSA went on to use the program to spy indiscriminately without troubling itself to determine whether the targeted individuals and groups had any links to terrorism. In one case, the FISA court determined that only 10 percent of a set of nearly 18,000 telephone numbers the government had targeted through the program met that basic criteria set forth in the court’s original order.
(snip)
“It has finally come to light that the FISC’s authorizations of this vast collection program have been premised on a flawed depiction of how the NSA uses the data that is collected, one judge wrote. “The government has compounded its noncompliance with the court’s orders by repeatedly submitting inaccurate descriptions” of its processes.”

etc., etc.

And now “they” want all of our medical data. The Obama admin. makes the former GDR and it’s Stasi look quaint.

Journalists emerging from a closed-door briefing at the White House Friday afternoon were informed that President Barack Obama won’t insist that a U.N. resolution governing Syria’s surrender of chemical weapons include a threat of military force if President Bashar Assad doesn’t follow through.

Reports sourced to “senior administration officials” began emerging moments after the journalists were seen coming out of the White House session.

“Obama will not insist on UN threat of force to ensure that Syria lives up to CW deal but will seek other consequences, officials said,” New York Times reporter Peter Baker said on Twitter. CNN and NBC carried

In The Vacuum Left By Obama’s “Leadership”, Putin Assumes Title of Most Powerful Man In The World

UK paper asks: Is Barack Obama the weakest President in history?

Anna Pukas reminds readers of the euphoria felt by many on the left when Obama, the “son of a Kenyan goatherd” was elected to be America’s first African-American President. Liberals across the country swooned as though it was the second coming of the Messiah. Giddy from the election, some thought their days of working were over and the new President would pay their mortgage and put gas in their car.

She also reminds us of his simple slogan, “Yes we can,” but immediately notes:

His presidency, however, is turning out to be more about “no we won’t.” Even more worryingly, it seems to be very much about: “Maybe we can… do what, exactly?“ The world feels like a dangerous place when leaders are seen to lack certitude but the only thing President Obama seems decisive about is his indecision. What should the US do about Libya? What should the US do about the Middle East in general? What about the country’s crippling debts? What is the US going to do about Afghanistan, about Iran?

Assad’s comments suggested another hurdle for the hastily arranged talks, which were already fraught with considerable risk, and threatened a separate diplomatic process at the United Nations. They demonstrated the limits of Moscow’s leverage over the embattled Syrian ruler, who faces a mortal threat from insurgents and their international supporters.

Neither Kerry nor Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov directly responded to Assad’s demands at a news conference. Both sought to project optimism about resolving the crisis that erupted after the U.S. said that more than 1,000 Syrians were killed in poison gas attacks outside Damascus last month.

U.S. Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) today released the following statement on the U.S.-Russian agreement on Syria:

“What concerns us most is that our friends and enemies will take the same lessons from this agreement – they see it as an act of provocative weakness on America’s part. We cannot imagine a worse signal to send to Iran as it continues its push for a nuclear weapon.

“Without a U.N. Security Council Resolution under Chapter 7 authority, which threatens the use of force for non-compliance by the Assad regime, this framework agreement is meaningless. Assad will use the months and months afforded to him to delay and deceive the world using every trick in Saddam Hussein’s playbook. It requires a willful suspension of disbelief to see this agreement as anything other than the start of a diplomatic blind alley, and the Obama Administration is being led into it by Bashar Assad and Vladimir Putin.

“What’s worse, this agreement does nothing to resolve the real problem in Syria, which is the underlying conflict that has killed 110,000 people, driven millions from their homes, destabilized our friends and allies in the region, emboldened Iran and its terrorist proxies, and become a safe haven for thousands of Al-Qaeda affiliated extremists. Is the message of this agreement that Assad is now our negotiating partner, and that he can go on slaughtering innocent civilians and destabilizing the Middle East using every tool of warfare, so long as he does not use chemical weapons? That is morally and strategically indefensible.

“The only way this underlying conflict can be brought to a decent end is by significantly increasing our support to moderate opposition forces in Syria. We must strengthen their ability to degrade Assad’s military advantage, change the momentum on the battlefield, and thereby create real conditions for a negotiated end to the conflict.”

“then I will not be looking for any ol’ woman that will run, but the MOST competent person.

We each have our own view of what’s important and I won’t argue with a man that is fighting for women’s rights. It’s just not the road I will go down for President. However, I do use that strategy when voting in the state elections. I don’t normally know many of these folks, so I do vote gender then.”

_____________

Jeswezey,

I totally agree. I do the same, for the most part. Won’t vote for extreme right female, because the few strides made regarding women’s rights are important to me. Won’t vote extreme left, because in my experience, the progs know a lot about theory, but little about living life in the real world. Life does not occur in the confines of academia, or a think tank. Decisions matter in the real world.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has accepted Iran’s invitation to visit Tehran to work out a strategy for the Islamic regime’s nuclear program, Fars News Agency reported Saturday. The West believes the Iranian program is a front for developing nuclear weapons.

Putin, seen by Iran’s clerical establishment as a strong opponent to America and the West — especially after his successful political play on averting a U.S. missile strike on Syria — was approached by Iran to protect the Islamic regime in the face of continued pressure by the West over its illicit nuclear program. Russia and the U.S. reached agreement Saturday to take control of Syrian President Bashar Assad’s chemical weapons arsenal by mid-2014.

Fars, the media outlet run by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, said Putin will soon travel to Tehran, although details of the trip have yet to be announced. Fars said Iranian President Hassan Rowhani issued the invitation to Putin on Friday while both leaders were attending the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said the Russian president accepted.

…………………………………….

Anyone surprised, Obama has completely lost the leadership of the world, have we ever been in this position before.

I won’t be surprised if there is another terrible car accident soon!
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Former Muslim Brotherhood Member Walid Shoebat ‘Being Harassed By U.S. Govt For Investigating Obama’s Family Ties’

On the Kuhner Report yesterday, Walid Shoebat told of how he is now being harassed and spied upon by the Obama administration over the work he has done uncovering Obama’s familial Islamist ties, especially his brother Malik Obama who is a supporter of terrorism. Shoebat said his phone is being tapped so they can listen into his house even when he is not on the phone. He said he has received harassing phone calls over and over and that a pre-taped, un-aired phone interview he had just recorded was played back to him on his phone just after he had finished recording it and hung up. Just unbelievable.

But Shoebat says he is an Eastern Christian and try as they may to wear him out by harassing him, he will not give up telling the truth to the American people about this president. Shoebat says the only way they will stop him is to kill him and he says, essentially, ‘bring it on.’

In the previous NYC election for mayor, AA Bill Thompson darned near beat Bloomberg. In the primary just held, he came in second with 26%. He is not conceding until all votes are counted. He’s been under pressure to quit, but holds firm. Truthfully, I am uncomfortable with de Blasio’s strategies which earned him 40% of the Dem vote. Thompson stands at 26% as absentee ballots are counted. While Bloomberg’s comment about de Blasio and racism was not well received prior to the vote, it can hardly be questioned now.
Sharpton hosts de Blasio in Harlem, and declares a new ‘identity politics of policy’ 9/14/13.
…On Saturday morning, the Rev. Al Sharpton welcomed Bill de Blasio to his weekly rally in Harlem, and did his best to explain de Blasio’s strong showing among black voters in Tuesday’s Democratic primary.”What the election showed the other night is that a lot of identity politics of 20 years ago, 30 years ago has now become the identity politics of policy,” said Sharpton.”Bill Thompson did very well in some white areas,” he continued. “Bill de Blasio did well in some black areas. You can no longer take yesterday’s map for today’s politics. “According to exit polls, de Blasio tied Thompson, the only black candidate in the race, among black voters, with each receiving 42 percent support. Sharpton withheld his endorsement in the Democratic primary, which came as a blow to Thompson, the only black candidate in the race, who was counting on strong support from black voters. Sharpton was reportedly unhappy that Thompson did not back two police oversight bills, which de Blasio made a focus of his campaign. The reverend also praised De Blasio for talking about income inequality and for his plan to tax high-earners to pay for early education programs, which Thompson opposed…http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/politics/2013/09/8533784/sharpton-hosts-de-blasio-harlem-and-declares-new-identity-politics-

President Obama has never acknowledged his distant cousin Milton Wolf,

Barack Obama’s fire-breathing conservative cousin set to run for the U.S. Senate to stop his family turning America ‘into a second rate welfare state’ 9/13/13.
This is not your typical political dynasty-in-the-making: A second cousin to Barack Obama is considering a run for U.S. Senate, and he’s a fire-breathing conservative.
Milton Wolf, whose mother’s cousin was also Obama’s grandmother, is a Kansas radiologist who writes columns for The Washington Times and produced videos for The Daily Caller last year.
Neither publication is known for its patience with the president, and Wolf fits right in with their politics. He is gauging support among conservative leaders for a primary challenge to Sen. Pat Roberts.
‘They say you can’t choose your family,’ Wolf said in one Daily Caller video, ‘but I say you can choose to stop your family from turning America into a second-rate, European-style social welfare state.
‘The current Republican establishment has become a mere speed bump on the Democrats’ road to a government-run social-welfare state.’ Wolf writes in his most recent Timescolumn. ‘As President Reagan described the Republicans in Congress in his time, and it’s equally true today, “We had rabbits when we needed tigers.”‘
His critique of the ‘kinder, gentler’ GOP that emerged from the first George Bush’s presidency isn’t lost on conservative leaders inside and outside of Kansas. Many of them got an email from Wolf three weeks ago which some see as an entree to a political run.
‘If you’ve ever asked yourself what you can do and you’re ready to fight for America … email me,’ he wrote, according to Politico. ‘It’s time for the patriots to save America from our failed political class.http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2420260/Obamas-conservative-second-cousin-Milton-Wolf-run-U-S-Senate.html

Summers : “I have reluctantly concluded that any possible confirmation process for me would be acrimonious and would not serve the interest of the Federal Reserve, the Administration or, ultimately, the interests of the nation’s ongoing economic recovery.”

Former Massachusetts Democratic Congressman Barney Frank threw cold water on this meme on NBC’s Meet the Press Sunday correctly informing viewers that the auto bailout lost money for the federal government. By contrast, we made money from George W. Bush’s 2008 bank bailout (video follows with transcript and commentary):

My goodness, those poor ol’ boys over at AMERICAN THINKER sure have gotten their lace panties in a wad over the idea of Hillary running for president. They put out a hit piece on her today. What are those guys going to do if a woman, Hillary or not, becomes president some day? They may have to borrow some of Rush’s oxy or whatever BO is on to calm down.

Obama has a way of leaving presumptive nominees hanging out there, slowly bleeding to death.

he’s an evil son of a B.
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As we know, Barack also left a lot of Dem candidates hanging in 2008. He was expected to speak at a number of different political rallies and events, to endorse and support various Dem candidates for senator, representative, governor, and other offices. Several times, he just didn’t show up. Sometimes he opted not to appear in person, but spoke to the crowd remotely, via web cam, video, or phone. He just couldn’t be counted on to be there for other Dems, even those who had stupidly endorsed him and campaigned for him. Obviously, they deserved to get the Barack treatment, for supporting him to begin with. But, Barack’s unwillingness to come through and honor commitments back then was an indicator of what his entire presidency would be like.

Indeed, this is something to celebrate. Reid, Boehner, Pelosi and McConnell all need to step away. They are ALL clueless as to what the majority of Americans want and more importantly, will tolerate from their government.
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2013 has been a tough year for the political class.

The most recent evidence comes from Colorado.

Earlier in the year, the political elites in Washington were certain gun control would be enacted following the horrific massacre at a Connecticut elementary school. When nothing passed, they expected politicians who refused to support more gun restrictions would face consequences for their actions.

There were consequences. Just not the one’s the political class expected.

After Colorado passed its own version of gun control legislation, two state senators were targeted by a grassroots effort for removal through a recall vote. It was the first time in the state’s history that the recall process had even been attempted. Outside money poured in, and gun control advocates outspent the NRA and its allies by a 6-to-1 margin. Despite the tremendous financial advantage they enjoyed, both state senators were removed from office because of their support for gun control legislation.

This wasn’t the first time the political class totally misread the public mood this year.

An early sign of trouble for the elites came with public reaction to the so-called sequester. More precisely, the D.C. panic was caused by the lack of public reaction.

Politicians, mainstream media organizations, defense contractors and others did everything they could to scare the public. President Obama himself used his State of the Union address to say, “These sudden, harsh, arbitrary cuts would jeopardize our military readiness.” To make sure voters understood his concern, he added, “They’d devastate priorities like education, energy and medical research. They would certainly slow our recovery and cost us hundreds of thousands of jobs.”

But it didn’t work.

People didn’t rise up in revolt and demand that Congress stop the sequester.

Instead, voters recognized that the politicians were crying wolf. The so-called cuts were not harsh and devastating. They were embarrassingly modest. In fact, all the sequester really did was reduce the growth of federal spending a bit. So, when the sequester went into effect, there was no revolt. Instead, hardly anybody noticed. Only those who work for the government really felt any impact.

Then there was Syria.

The political class has long been much more enthusiastic about military interventions than the American people. Some among the elite like it for humanitarian purposes, some for prestige, and some because they believe the U.S. should be the global policeman.

Voters think we should take action only when our vital national security interests are at stake.

Still, when the president was forced to seek approval from Congress, the initial expectation was for easy passage in the Democratic controlled Senate and a close vote in the Republican controlled House. Instead, public reaction to the president’s request was so negative that it became a rout.

It was stunning to see what happens when Congress actually listens to voters rather than following the insiders.

On gun control, the sequester and Syria, the political class showed how little grasp it has about the attitudes of mainstream America. Other issues are likely to reveal the same cluelessness as 2014 approaches.

The political class world is crumbling. That’s something to celebrate.

Benghazi Dad Charles Woods: “Ty’s Body Left On Tarmac For Three Hours”, No Rescue Sent, Obama Off To Vegas

Mr. Woods said he sent a letter to the President requesting answers on Benghazi, but he has received no answers as of yet. When asked about President, he said:

I wish he had taken the time the night of September 11, not to go to bed, not to go prepare to collect money in Las Vegas, but I wish he had taken time then to watch more of the video of the live time ambush attack at the Embassy and that I wish that he had sent the troops that everybody knows were available to rescue those people…

In this case, there was no rescue attempt, no planes sent. In fact, Ty’s body was left on the tarmac for three hours and there wasn’t even an American plane sent to rescue or even take his body home.

They had to commandeer a Libyan plane and didn’t even know where they would be taken in order to remove his body from the tarmac. Is that the way to treat an American hero?

In additional comment not in the above video, Mr. Woods noted that around the time of his funeral he had made contact with one of the survivors, but that since that time, he has been unable to get any response to inquiries to that person’s phone or email.

Mr. Woods also noted he was informed of a conversation by General Carter Ham that there were assets available to use for a rescue but Ham was not allowed to deploy those assets.

Over a year now after the jihad against our consulate in Benghazi that led to the suspected rape and murder of our Ambassador and the murder of the US attaches, and no one has been apprehended.

“U.S. intelligence officials, and our war fighters in the Defense Department, are hamstrung by a law enforcement model,” said Thomas Joscelyn of the Center for Defense of Democracies.

Now FOX News is reporting that the Obama administration’s intention is to try the enemy combatants in US courts. This is not a law enforcement issue, this is war; but Obama would rather see Americans dead than admit jihad exists and means to destroy the West. So this is …..street crime? And what would Obama try them with, anyway? “By the time the FBI reached the consulate where four Americans died on Sep. 11, 2012, the crime scene was contaminated.” It took them a month to get there, and the AP reported that the FBI came and left after about 12 hours on the ground. “Agents arrived in Benghazi before dawn on Thursday and departed after sunset, after weeks of waiting for access to the crime scene to investigate the Sept. 11 attack.”

CBS Report: U.S. Had Predator Drone Over Benghazi As Attack Happened, “They Stood, And They Watched, And Our People Died”

CBS News has been told that, hours after the attack began, an unmanned Predator drone was sent over the U.S. mission in Benghazi, and that the drone and other reconnaissance aircraft apparently observed the final hours of the protracted battle.

The State Department, White House and Pentagon declined to say what military options were available.

As we approach the 100 year anniversary of the creation of the Federal Reserve, it is absolutely imperative that we get the American people to understand that the Fed is at the very heart of our economic problems. It is a system of money that was created by the bankers and that operates for the benefit of the bankers. The American people like to think that we have a “democratic system”, but there is nothing “democratic” about the Federal Reserve. Unelected, unaccountable central planners from a private central bank run our financial system and manage our economy. There is a reason why financial markets respond with a yawn when Barack Obama says something about the economy, but they swing wildly whenever Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke opens his mouth. The Federal Reserve has far more power over the U.S. economy than anyone else does by a huge margin. The Fed is the biggest Ponzi scheme in the history of the world, and if the American people truly understood how it really works, they would be screaming for it to be abolished immediately. The following are 25 fast facts about the Federal Reserve that everyone should know…

No, I think a President can stop it. The problem is that there continues to be a major debate in Washington. And that is, how do we respond to the underlying trends? If you look at the data, a couple of things are creating these trends. Number one, globalization. Right? Capital, companies, they can move businesses and jobs anywhere they want. And so they’re looking for the lowest wages. That squeezes workers here in the United States even if corporations are profitable. Technology. If you go to a lot of companies now, they’ve have eliminated entire occupations because they’re now robotized. We don’t have travel agents, we don’t have bank tellers.

When Government blocks America from developing it’s natural resources, come up with extensive EPA Regulations designed to stop Coal production. Takes Taxpayer money and tries to create new industries rather than let the Private Sector and Capitalism work, you have what we have. Obama Cronies getting Millions of Dollars to develop Solar, Wind,Electric Car Companies that go bankrupt on our dime. It’s not bigger than Washington that’s the problem, it’s Washington’s complete ignorance on how Capitalism works and what made this Country the ONCE GREATEST COUNTRY IN THE WORLD.

Well, despite his Obama-hugging photo-ops, Gov. Christie is warming the heart of NJ-ans once again. Seems he really does know how to console the masses, give them hope. And there is a swell of appreciation for his response to the Seaside Hts/Park fire. Early on one of the WH lickers let it be known that Obahma had stated there was Federal $ available, and anyone would have to figure that POTUS was looking for an invite up. And perhaps it will come, but in the meantime there is this Gubernatorial nod toward Tea party types in the state:

SALT LAKE CITY ­ A Salt Lake attorney who contends the FBI is hiding surveillance video associated with the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing might see his case go trial.

U.S. District Judge Clark Waddoups denied the government’s motion to dismiss the case Monday and ordered both sides to prepare for a bench trial. He scheduled a status hearing for Nov. 21, at which a trial date will be set.

“This is a significant ruling,” said Jesse Trentadue, who has spent years trying to get the tapes. “There’s no doubt that evidence exists. The question then becomes why can’t you find it. The obvious answer is you don’t want to find it.”

At issue is whether the FBI adequately responded to Trentadue’s Freedom of Information Act request for footage of Timothy McVeigh parking a truckload of explosives at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building on April 19, 1995.

Specifically, he is after surveillance tape of the federal building and neighboring buildings as well as dashcam video from the Oklahoma state trooper who stopped McVeigh 90 minutes after the explosion that killed 168 people.

The FBI has released 30 videotapes and 200 documents in response to Trentadue’s FOIA request.

Trentadue began looking into the bombing after his brother died in a federal detention center in Oklahoma. He believes federal agents mistook Kenneth Trentadue, a convicted bank robber, for a bombing suspect and beat him to death during an August 1995 interrogation. His official cause of death was listed as suicide.

Trenatdue claims the video will reveal a second bombing suspect who resembles but is not his brother.

* I didn’t create this mess, been left at my feet by that other guy
* The Republicans are playing chicken with the economy, which is irresponsible and dangerous.
* Things are getting better.
* But things could get better.
* I’m fighting for the little guy.

From the link.
Alexis, who was killed today during a gun battle with police, was apparently a civilian computer contractor. Records show that Alexis, who was previously a full-time Navy reservist, has used the e-mail address aaron.alexis@navy.mil.

According to Navy officials, Alexis served as a reservist from May 2007 until his January 2011 discharge. Alexis was assigned to a logistics support unit based in Fort Worth and achieved a final rank of Aviation Electrician’s Mate 3rd Class.

Alexis was arrested for disorderly conduct in August 2008 in DeKalb County, Georgia. He was released from custody after posting $364 bond (and posing for a booking photo). The details and disposition of the misdemeanor case could not be obtained.

Obama waives ban on arming terrorists to allow aid to Syrian opposition” The Examiner, September 16, 2013 (thanks to Van)

President Obama waived a provision of federal law designed to prevent the supply of arms to terrorist groups to clear the way for the U.S. to provide military assistance to “vetted” opposition groups fighting Syrian dictator Bashar Assad.

Some elements of the Syrian opposition are associated with radical Islamic terrorist groups, including al Qaeda, which was responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks in New York, Washington, D.C., and Shanksville, Pa., in 2001. Assad’s regime is backed by Iran and Hezbollah.

The president, citing his authority under the Arms Export Control Act, announced today that he would “waive the prohibitions in sections 40 and 40A of the AECA related to such a transaction.”

foxyladi14
September 16, 2013 at 5:52 pm
h/t CDH
———————–
Wow. that is a good catch and I hope someone puts up a vote to decide whether this gaffe was worse than Candy’s correcting Mitt during the 3rd debate. 🙂
Our pretty bird in the Oval Office seemed to want to forget Fort Hood too. The clip I saw of him this AM referred to shootings and specifically precluded military. So the article at Leanora’s @ 5:28 is particularly offensive.

Lastly, I’m sorry to see that Bill Thompson for NYC mayor caved to wishes he drop out.

WASHINGTON (AP) ­ President Barack Obama on Monday wearily lamented “yet another mass shooting,” this time in the nation’s capital where the debate that raged earlier this year over tightening firearms laws has stalled amid opposition from gun-rights advocates.

The shooting at the Washington Navy Yard came a week after voters recalled two Colorado legislators who supported tougher gun measures, illustrating the strong political headwinds faced by lawmakers seeking to respond to the violence.

Obama, for one, has been powerless to get legislation passed despite a string of mass shootings during his presidency.

In the wake of the shooting at the Navy Yard, Obama spokesman Jay Carney said the president is implementing executive actions and reiterated his commitment to strengthening gun laws, including expanding background checks to sales online and at gun shows.

“The president supports, as do an overwhelming majority of Americans, common-sense measures to reduce gun violence,” Carney said.

ReFounders
Twelve years after 911 we have gone from fighting Al Quida to arming them. Sickening…and he has no authority to “waive” US law, he is supposed to enforce and uphold it under the Constitution.

Fixyladi 11:13. Is that gum in his cheek, or tongue?
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I saw Samantha Powers saying something today. Outfit was outrageous, seemed to me. Don’t know where she was or what she said. But she’s not the type to be wearing low neckline sleeveless too hmmmm I think.
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Also, I post the next subject because I have a close friend who, by her personal experience, will back the premise up 100% and the guy who writes the blog has a good resume.
Breaking: US Navy Yard shooting: is it possible to learn the truth? Jon Rappoport
I’ve covered a number of mass shootings. Assuming the people arrested or killed had anything to do with them, one of the top questions is: was the shooter on psychiatric meds? The mainstream press doesn’t push for answers.
It’s a vital question. In school shootings, we’ve learned that the answer is often yes. For example, Eric Harris at Columbine in 1999 was on Luvox, an SSRI antidepressant. These SSRIs are well known for pushing people over the edge into violence; and the manic effects can also motivate them to form grandiose plans for destruction. (See the website “SSRI stories” for documented accounts…..) In the last few years, the US Armed Forces have loaded down their personnel with psychiatric meds, which have led to suicides and killings.Typically, at these shootings, pharmaceutical investigators show up to find out whether their drugs are involved, so, if necessary, they can clamp down on “information leaks” and instead divert the conversation to: “he had a mental disorder,” as if that, rather than the drugs, was the key factor. Another top question: was it a “random” shooting or was it an intentional op, designed for several purposes: implementing a further gun grab from private citizens; a lesson in official control—“obey the instructions of the authorities and shelter in place”; inducing generalized fear and demoralization in the population; and distracting the public from ongoing scandals/ops—e.g., Syria, NSA spying, Benghazi.
More at: http://jonrappoport.wordpress.com/2013/09/16/breaking-us-navy-yard-shooting-is-it-possible-to-learn-the-truth/

Two hundred and twenty-six years ago today, the Constitutional Convention came to an end. The delegates completed the first step in a process that would, in time, lead to the world’s longest-lasting and most successful charter of government. We honor their work as we celebrate Constitution Day. But just how many in America’s ruling class are celebrating the Founders’ Constitution with us?

Of course, disputes over the Constitution’s value arose from the start. After New York Governor George Clinton read it, he called it “a monster with open mouth and monstrous teeth ready to devour all before it.” Other (not always less strident) Anti-Federalists included Patrick Henry, George Mason, and Richard Henry Lee­great patriots all who had sacrificed much for American freedom and independence.

The Federalists and Anti-Federalists argued over whether the Constitution was a good means to their common end: to secure the long-term survival of a free republic on American soil. And so they supported or opposed the Constitution based upon their best judgment concerning whether it would help or hinder that effort.

Despite the sometimes sharp rhetoric of the debate, neither side had abandoned the essential principles of 1776: (1) that the job of government was to “secure” the God-given natural rights equally possessed by “all men”; and that this ought to be done by (2) “an impartial and exact execution of the laws,” as John Adams put it.

What distinguishes today’s progressive ruling class critics of the Founders’ Constitution from the Anti-Federalists is their wholesale rejection of both of these principles and almost all of the premises that inform them. In the spirit of their great intellectual forebear, Herbert Croly, they aim not to protect equal rights, but to produce equal results, with laws specially crafted and artfully applied to favor–well, those whom they favor.

“The president supports, as do an overwhelming majority of Americans, common-sense measures to reduce gun violence,” Carney said.

________

This is a non-statement. Nothing of substance. Who doesn’t want to reduce gun violence – or any kind for that matter? As for the common sense part – common sense to one person is idiocy to another. Common sense prevention of anything is almost always a multifaceted approach. In the case of the Navy Yard shooter, if it’s true that he had some kind of secret clearance, better screening of those given such access would be a good place to start, it seems to me. Better security measures, in general would have been appropriate.

Using this tragedy to launch another gun control campaign is not only ineffective, it removes focus from the real problems, and potentially, does much more harm than good. Some features of gun control are appropriate – background checks, for example. Will this do a lot to prevent people who would do violence with guns from carrying out their heinous acts? Probably not. But, it’s one tiny piece of the pie. Another piece is to look at reason people decide to act out in violence toward people they don’t know – or even people they do. Intervention early on is called for in many cases.

This focus on gun control must just be an effort to divert attention away from the serious issues. Most of the research out there shows that gun control will not stop the people who would use them to kill people and/or commit violent crimes. With so many serious issues that need attention right now, this just seems like a wast of time.

Yesterday Marked The 16th American Mass Shooting Since Obama Became President

When you add up the numbers, a very disturbing picture of Obama’s presidency begins to unfold. He was elected as the “racial uniter”, the Nobel Peace Prize president who was going to “stop the rise of the oceans” and “heal our planet.”

Yet his 4 and one half years of occupying the desk at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue hide a sinister statistic – America has had 15 mass shootings since he became president, and today’s massacre at the Navy Shipyard now brings that total to 16. And since this is a list of shootings only, it does not include the Boston Bombing Massacre that Obama used to roll out martial law for a 24-hour period in Boston.

foxyladi14
September 17, 2013 at 11:13 am
This is outright propaganda by Obama while 12 people lay dead!
_______________
Charles Krauthammer agrees.
Krauthammer: Obama’s Lehman Brothers speech ‘was in extremely bad taste’
Charles Krauthammer told viewers Monday on “Special Report with Bret Baier” that President Obama should have waited until Tuesday to give his speech on the fifth anniversary of the financial meltdown — instead of during an ongoing shooting at the Navy Yard in Washington, D.C. “The president in that speech was back to hyper-partisan mode. Slashing attack on Republicans, at one point, he’s speaking of the Republicans, he said, and some of them are decent, which is quite a remarkable thing for a president to say if you expect cooperation. “And to do this within minutes of 13 naval employees, brave Americans lying dead, I thought was in extremely bad taste. He could have waited until tomorrow. It isn’t as if this is a holy anniversary. He could have spoken later in the week which is the week that marks the fifth year of the crisis.”
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/09/17/krauthammer-obamas-lehman-brothers-speech-was-in-extremely-bad-taste/

On September 11, the United Nations reasserted that it believes it has the exclusive and undeniable right to determine when a people is worthy of sovereignty and when the UN must step in and rule for them.

At an informal meeting of the General Assembly, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon declared the international body’s continuing commitment to protecting populations of member states from suffering under regimes that fail to “fulfill their obligations under the rule of law.” This includes Syria, Libya, and anywhere else in the world that isn’t toeing the one-world-government line.

I’m glad someone is speaking out, but impeachment should just be the beginning. Barry Hussein should be tried for treason and thrown in jail!!
==

Glenn Beck Calls for Obama Impeachment

Saying that arming known terrorists is an impeachable offense, Beck said, “You’re arming and aiding enemies of the United states. Enemies who are not even a direct threat the the United States.”

He told his listening audience, ”We did not get into bed with Hitler to defeat Japan,” calling out Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham for their involvement in the Syrian action and advised Arizona voters to get rid of McCain.

“We did not get into bed with Hitler to defeat Japan. This is treason and impeachable. The president knows it’s against the law. It’s why he waived it.”

Beck was referring to President Obama‘s action yesterday to waive a provision of federal law designed to prevent the supply of arms to terrorist groups.

According to a published report in the Washington Examiner, Obama did this to clear the way for the U.S. to provide military assistance to “vetted” opposition groups fighting Syrian dictator Bashar Assad.

Tuesday, on CNN’s “The Lead with Jake Tapper,” Michael Ritrovato spoke at length about his friend, suspected Navy Yard shooter Aaron Alexis. After expressing his condolences to the victims and their families, Ritrovato then expressed his shock over the actions of a man he described as being “like a brother to me” and a “good-natured guy.”

Ritrovato went on to explain that two of them had a close relationship based in part on their differences, specifically race and politics. Alexis was black, Ritrovato is white. Ritrovato described himself as conservative and Alexis is “more of a liberal type” who supported Barack Obama:

I would say things like, ‘You know, you are my brother from another mother.’ And he would say things like, ‘You’re my Italian mafia guy from New York.’ So we had things we joked about: Aaron wasn’t conservative like I am. He was more of a liberal type; he wasn’t happy with the former [Bush] administration. He was more happy with this [the Obama] administration — as far as presidential administrations.

Ritrovato said he hadn’t seen Alexis in a while. The last time they spoke was by phone, where the Alexis talked about his frustration with the company he worked for. Apparently, the company was “slow to pay.” There have been other media reports about Alexis being with upset his company regarding some expenses incurred during a trip to Japan.

Ritrovato said that Alexis’ fondness for “violent video games” was the only red flag he saw in retrospect.

“I thought was in extremely bad taste. He could have waited until tomorrow. It isn’t as if this is a holy anniversary. He could have spoken later in the week which is the week that marks the fifth year of the crisis.”
_________________________

These kinds of missteps are not uncommon for Barack. Responding appropriately to tragedy can be taught and learned. Barack knows the right words to say to convey sympathy to family and loved ones who have experienced a tragic loss. He knows the words to say to the nation when tragedy occurs. But, it’s harder to learn how to experience and when to express real empathy and compassion. Barack doesn’t seem to feel true empathy for his fellow Americans or to connect with their pain and suffering. This seems to be a deficit in his personality and character. If you truly don’t feel genuine emotion about a tragedy, you may find it difficult to know what not to say and when not to say it.

I don’t get why Barack’s advisers don’t seem to know that he needs coaching about these issues – why they didn’t just tell him to wait about bring up the partisan economic issues, and attempt to conjure up some real compassion. Apparently, either his people don’t feel empathy either, and can’t advise him about appropriate behavior related to these kinds of events, or maybe he doesn’t listen to them, either. My guess is – they haven’t any more of a clue than their boss does.

freespirit
September 17, 2013 at 5:39 pm
——————————-
Barack’s dance card apparently has no empty lines.
..Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced on Tuesday morning, Sept. 17, 2013 at the weekly cabinet meeting that he will postpone his speech to the United Nations General Assembly by one day to make time to meet with United States President Barack Obama. Netanyahu was scheduled to address the General Assembly on Sept. 30 instead he will now meet with President Obama at the White House in Washington D.C. before flying to New York to speak at the U.N. on Oct. 1. Prime Minister Netanyahu requested to meet with the President, and the only day Obama was available was Sept. 30; Obama is occupied with hearings for the implementation of his health care reform law, the Affordable Care Act, more popularly known as Obamacare. Obama has refused to meet however, with the new Iranian President Hassan Rohani, who will also be speaking at the General Assembly and requested to meet as well with Obama…http://www.examiner.com/article/netanyahu-postpones-un-general-assembly-speech-to-meet-with-obama

And perhaps the impending excitement of the world stage [does he not have a speech to give there too? ] is alluring to the point that he’s happy to leave his current obligations in a heap of total neglect.
Shades of boredom, perhaps; such as the poor man endured whilst waiting for his election to happen. At which time duties more fitting of his greatness could occupy his time.

Between October 11th and 13th they have called for a general strike, asking truck drivers around the country to refuse to haul freight, a move that could carry with it a significant impact on the American economy.

The protest calls for truckers to make their way to Washington D.C. in a massive convoy in an effort to call attention to, among other things, the Benghazi cover-up, the recent attack which killed 25 members of Seal Team 6, ever rising fuel prices, and claims that President Obama has engaged in treasonous crimes.

Moreover, they’ve requested that the American people join them in solidarity by not shopping or engaging in any economic activity that benefits the government or their corporate interests.

Even Dowd knows that Obama’s great communicator sham is no longer working:
____________________________________________________

On the most deadly day here since Sept. 11, 2001, with the capital reeling over the sadly familiar scene of a mass shooting by a madman, the chief executive stepped to the microphones and captured the heartbreak.

It wasn’t the chief executive of the nation. It was Dr. Janis Orlowski, the chief operating officer of MedStar Washington Hospital Center, where three of those injured were being treated.

“There’s something evil in our society that we as Americans have to work to try and eradicate,” she said, her voice stoic but laced with emotion. On the day when she announced only hours earlier that she had submitted her resignation to take another job, she continued: “There’s something wrong here when we have these multiple shootings, these multiple injuries. There is something wrong, and the only thing that I can say is we have to work together to get rid of it. I would like you to put my trauma center out of business. I really would. I would like to not be an expert on gunshots.”

Calling it “a challenge to all of us,” she concluded: “This is not America.”

President Obama also gave a speech Monday, talking at the White House while the drama unfolded at the supposedly secure Navy Yard nearby. He could have posted his original remarks on the White House Web site and replaced them with a cri de coeur on gun control, or comfort for the shaken city. The 12 who died were, after all, under his aegis as workers in a federal building.

But, jarringly, the president went ahead with his political attack, briefly addressing the slaughter before moving on to jab Republicans over the corporate tax rate and resistance to Obamacare.

Just as with the address to the nation on Syria last week, the president went ahead with a speech overtaken by events. It was out of joint, given that the Senate was put into lockdown and the Washington Nationals delayed a night game against the Atlanta Braves, noting on its Web site, “Postponed: Tragedy.”

The man who connected so electrically and facilely in 2008, causing Americans to overlook his thin résumé, cannot seem to connect anymore.

With a shrinking circle of trust inside the White House, Obama is having trouble establishing trust outside with once reliable factions: grass-roots Democrats and liberals in Congress.

As Peter Baker wrote in The Times, the president is finding himself increasingly “frustrated” by the defiance of Democrats who are despairing of his passive, reactive leadership.

Senator Jon Tester, a Democrat from Montana on the banking committee, told Jonathan Martin for Politico in February, after he scraped through to a second term, that the president was not engaged with the Hill, that he had not met with Obama at the White House since 2010, and that he was sorely missing aides like Rahm Emanuel, who tirelessly worked and stroked Democrats in Congress.

Tester was one of three Democrats who spurned the president on his favorite to run the Federal Reserve, Larry Summers. The White House didn’t call Tester until Friday, when it was too late; Summers was allowed to twist in the wind, like Susan Rice before him.

Top Democrats who used to consider Obama one cool cat now muse that he’s “one weird cat,” as one big shot put it.

Obama still has a secret weapon: Congressional Republicans, who might yet shut down the government or cause a cataclysmic default and make the president look good.

But, for now, puzzlement grows over the contrast between Obama’s campaign leaps and his governing lassitude. Obama biographer Richard Wolffe notes that the 2012 campaign had some of the same problems with leadership and direction, but looked good compared with the mid-20th-century Romney crowd, “who couldn’t get an app to work.”

“I don’t know who they think they’re talking to or what they think they’re trying to say,” said Wolffe, whose new book is “The Message: The Reselling of President Obama.” “The president is a very muddled and entrenched figure who needs to get out of a defensive crouch and get some fresh ideas.”

Unlike Bill Clinton, who excels at boiling down complex arguments to simple ones, Obama prefers to wallow in the weeds, reminding people that he’s the smartest man in the room and expecting their support because he feels he is only doing what’s complicated and right.

But, funnily enough, as Wolffe points out, “he’s more like the Clintons than I ever thought this White House would be — with different factions and power bases and personal rivalries.”

ABC News’s George Stephanopoulos asked the president about criticism of the administration’s serpentine Syria policy, citing a frustrated backer of the plan to strike Syria, Senator Bob Corker, a Republican of Tennessee. Corker said that the careering around left Obama diminished as president, and he observed that the president seemed caged in the role, like he wanted to “slip the noose.”

“I think that folks here in Washington like to grade on style,” Obama said dismissively of his Syria critics.

But why is it so often the president’s style to be unable to sell the substance — even on issues where most people agree with him?

Even Dowd knows that Obama’s great communicator sham is no longer working:
____________________________________________________

On the most deadly day here since Sept. 11, 2001, with the capital reeling over the sadly familiar scene of a mass shooting by a madman, the chief executive stepped to the microphones and captured the heartbreak.

It wasn’t the chief executive of the nation. It was Dr. Janis Orlowski, the chief operating officer of MedStar Washington Hospital Center, where three of those injured were being treated.

“There’s something evil in our society that we as Americans have to work to try and eradicate,” she said, her voice stoic but laced with emotion. On the day when she announced only hours earlier that she had submitted her resignation to take another job, she continued: “There’s something wrong here when we have these multiple shootings, these multiple injuries. There is something wrong, and the only thing that I can say is we have to work together to get rid of it. I would like you to put my trauma center out of business. I really would. I would like to not be an expert on gunshots.”

Calling it “a challenge to all of us,” she concluded: “This is not America.”

President Obama also gave a speech Monday, talking at the White House while the drama unfolded at the supposedly secure Navy Yard nearby. He could have posted his original remarks on the White House Web site and replaced them with a cri de coeur on gun control, or comfort for the shaken city. The 12 who died were, after all, under his aegis as workers in a federal building.

But, jarringly, the president went ahead with his political attack, briefly addressing the slaughter before moving on to jab Republicans over the corporate tax rate and resistance to Obamacare.

Just as with the address to the nation on Syria last week, the president went ahead with a speech overtaken by events. It was out of joint, given that the Senate was put into lockdown and the Washington Nationals delayed a night game against the Atlanta Braves, noting on its Web site, “Postponed: Tragedy.”

The man who connected so electrically and facilely in 2008, causing Americans to overlook his thin résumé, cannot seem to connect anymore.

With a shrinking circle of trust inside the White House, Obama is having trouble establishing trust outside with once reliable factions: grass-roots Democrats and liberals in Congress.

As Peter Baker wrote in The Times, the president is finding himself increasingly “frustrated” by the defiance of Democrats who are despairing of his passive, reactive leadership.

Senator Jon Tester, a Democrat from Montana on the banking committee, told Jonathan Martin for Politico in February, after he scraped through to a second term, that the president was not engaged with the Hill, that he had not met with Obama at the White House since 2010, and that he was sorely missing aides like Rahm Emanuel, who tirelessly worked and stroked Democrats in Congress.

Tester was one of three Democrats who spurned the president on his favorite to run the Federal Reserve, Larry Summers. The White House didn’t call Tester until Friday, when it was too late; Summers was allowed to twist in the wind, like Susan Rice before him.

Top Democrats who used to consider Obama one cool cat now muse that he’s “one weird cat,” as one big shot put it.

Obama still has a secret weapon: Congressional Republicans, who might yet shut down the government or cause a cataclysmic default and make the president look good.

But, for now, puzzlement grows over the contrast between Obama’s campaign leaps and his governing lassitude. Obama biographer Richard Wolffe notes that the 2012 campaign had some of the same problems with leadership and direction, but looked good compared with the mid-20th-century Romney crowd, “who couldn’t get an app to work.”

“I don’t know who they think they’re talking to or what they think they’re trying to say,” said Wolffe, whose new book is “The Message: The Reselling of President Obama.” “The president is a very muddled and entrenched figure who needs to get out of a defensive crouch and get some fresh ideas.”

Unlike Bill Clinton, who excels at boiling down complex arguments to simple ones, Obama prefers to wallow in the weeds, reminding people that he’s the smartest man in the room and expecting their support because he feels he is only doing what’s complicated and right.

But, funnily enough, as Wolffe points out, “he’s more like the Clintons than I ever thought this White House would be — with different factions and power bases and personal rivalries.”

ABC News’s George Stephanopoulos asked the president about criticism of the administration’s serpentine Syria policy, citing a frustrated backer of the plan to strike Syria, Senator Bob Corker, a Republican of Tennessee. Corker said that the careering around left Obama diminished as president, and he observed that the president seemed caged in the role, like he wanted to “slip the noose.”

“I think that folks here in Washington like to grade on style,” Obama said dismissively of his Syria critics.

But why is it so often the president’s style to be unable to sell the substance — even on issues where most people agree with him?

freespirit
September 17, 2013 at 12:14 pm
“The president supports, as do an overwhelming majority of Americans, common-sense measures to reduce gun violence,” Carney said.
*************
The guy should never have had a gun or security clearance with his violent history. If we would just enforce the laws we already have, the violence would drop tenfold.

I see that McAuliffe is showing his concern for the women of his state. I do hope the voters show their concern in November and send him home!
=====

McAuliffe Vows To Keep Sub-Standard Abortion Clinics Open If Elected

Virginia Democrat gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe has been caught on tape saying that, if elected, he will issue a directive to unilaterally allow abortion clinics that do not meet state health standards to remain open.

According to LifeSiteNews, McAuliffe said he will take executive action to get around regulations on behalf of abortion facilities that do not meet board of health criteria.

“But, for now, puzzlement grows over the contrast between Obama’s campaign leaps and his governing lassitude. Obama biographer Richard Wolffe notes that the 2012 campaign had some of the same problems with leadership and direction, but looked good compared with the mid-20th-century Romney crowd, “who couldn’t get an app to work.”

___________________

Who are these dumb asses who are still puzzled about “the contrast between obama’s campaign leaps and his governing lassitude”? Who are they? Dowd? Puff-ho? Tingles?

How anyone could have ever thought he would be anything other than he has been- throughout his presidency – throughout his life? There was absolutely nothing on which to base the beliefs that Obama was some kind of savior. It was all fiction. A media and Axelrod creation. WTF do they teach at journalism school?

President Barack Obama accelerated firearm shipments to al-Qaeda on the very same day he demanded more gun control in the wake of the D.C. Navy Yard shooting.

Obama waived a provision in federal law specifically designed to keep the U.S. government from supplying firearms to terrorists such as al-Qaeda, according to the Washington Examiner.

Citing his authority under the Arms Export Control Act, the president declared Monday that he would “waive the prohibitions in sections 40 and 40A of the AECA related to such a transaction.”

No longer will Obama need to rely on the CIA to give free guns to Islamic extremists in Syria; now he will make the transfers openly with this “transparent government” initiative.

On the same day as his overt approval for arms to al-Qaeda, Obama announced that he is drafting executive orders for more gun control.

“We have gone about implementing the executive actions that were part of the president’s plan to take action to reduce gun violence,” White House press secretary Jay Carney said after the Navy Yard shooting. “Obviously, he continues to support measures taken by Congress ­ that could be taken by Congress to reduce gun violence in a common-sense way, like improving our background-check system.”

In essence, Obama will act on his own to force firearm restrictions onto the American people and if Congress would like to join him later, they are welcome to do so.

It’s like a Greek tragedy mixed with a drama set in a daytime soap opera. I would be enamored with this chain of events if it was on ABC Thursday at 8pm CST. But its real life. He is GIVING WEAPONS TO THE PEOPLE THAT ATTACKED US!!!!! Bush attacked a country that posed no threat to us. Bad. Very Bad. This guy is GIVING THE PEOPLE THAT KILLED OUR CITIZENS THE MEANS TO DO IT AGAIN!! Even if none of the guns kill any Americans directly, they could be used against our facilities abroad, or against our allies worldwide.

(CNSNews.com) – House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), appearing with other Republican leaders on Wednesday, said the House will pass a continuing resolution (CR) that defunds Obamacare and lets the Senate deal with it.

He also indicated that Republicans will use debt limit legislation as leverage in an attempt to cut spending.

Two other Republicans said their conference has agreed to “delay” Obamacare.

“This week, the House will pass a CR that locks the sequester savings in and defunds Obamacare,” Boehner said. “The president has signed seven bills over the last year to make changes to Obamacare, and I sincerely hope our friends in the Senate have plans to make this an eighth time.” He refused to predict what the Senate will do.

Calling the law a “train wreck,” Boehner said, “it’s time to protect American families from this unworkable law.”

Boehner also indicated Republicans are willing to demand spending cuts as part of legislation increasing the nation’s borrowing limit:

“You know, for decades, Congresses and presidents have used the debt limit for legislation to cut spending. And even President Obama worked with us two years ago in the debt limit negotiations to put controls on spending. This year is not going to be any different,” Boehner said.

Damascus, (SANA) – President Bashar al-Assad on Wednesday received a US delegation including former Congressmen, anti-war activists, and journalists, headed by former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark.

During the meeting, President al-Assad said that the policies adopted by the US administration in the region, which are based on waging wars, interfering in countries affairs, and imposing dominance on its people and resources, do not serve the interests of the American people and contradict their values and principles.

For their part, members of the delegation hoped that peace and stability will return to Syria, saying that they will continue to defend Syria in various circles and work to uncover the false nature of the accusations promoted by Obama’s administration to the American Public opinion to justify aggression on the Syrian people.

foxy, I’m surprised about that delegation. Maybe it’s not that unusual, but it seems to be. We’re used to Jessie Jackson or Jimmy Carter involving themselves in that way – usually to support the US position, but for a group to go to a foreign leader, and essentially take his side against Barack’s seems pretty unusual – especially since Barack is the most wonderful, sensitive, honest, just plain nifty president ever in the history of the country. lol

yeah, free…and according to Michelle…O has ‘swag’ and knows how to “shake his groove thing” and would have this Monday night but they had to cancel Latin music night at WH because of the DC shooting, otherwise O would have been ‘shaken his groove thing’ with Gloria Estefan, Ricky Marin, and Romeo Santos among others…surely to be rescheduled so O can “shake his groove thing”…not to be missed…

Wbb hasn’t been around in a while. Hope all is well.
—————————
Thanks for asking freespirit. Here is an except from a paper I just completed. I think you will enjoy it.

MR. OBAMA’S FINE SYRIAN MISADVENTURE

5. CASEY AT BAT

By the end of August, Putin was resigned to the prospect that the United States would launch an air attack against Assad and there was nothing he could do about it. The American attack forces were in place, the rebels were waiting, and all it took was one presidential order. (Note: to not act under these circumstances would be a betrayal of the rebels, as we saw in the Bay of Pigs.)

But instead of giving that order, Mr. Obama chose to savor the moment. Like Casey At Bat, he swaggered to home plate, and let a couple strikes go by. Some wag from the peanut gallery implored: Oh Mighty One, when will you strike? Obama sneered and told the Mudville crowd: Worry not ye of little faith! I can hit it out of the ball park anytime I damned well please! But right now the Golf God beckons–and a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do. After that who knows . .

Well, at that point the Furies decided they had had more than enough of Barack’s bullshit. So they stepped in and the fat began to fly: i) first, Parliament turned down Prime Minister Cameron’s request to approve the air strike, ii) second, the French government announced it would not go it alone, iii) third, the UN needed more time to complete its report on the chemical weapons attack, and iv) fourth, Congress was poised to turn down his war authorization request.

Suddenly, Mighty Casey morphed into Little Barry and began to twist in the wind. The symphony he had behind him was reduced to a flute solo. And he was on the horns of a dilemma. He committed to launch an air attack on Syria on behalf of the international community and our country. But now the world community was telling him he shouldn’t, Congress was telling him he couldn’t, and no one needed to remind him of his campaign promise to end wars– not to start them.

6. PUTIN SETS THE TRAP

Whereupon Putin, judo master that he is, chose that dramatic moment to act. He staged a number of public appearances to stoke skepticism about the use of force. He argued that Assad did not launch the chemical attacks, and the evidence that he did so was suspect. Therefore, the United States should not repeat learn from the mistake it made in Iraq and launch a war based on false evidence. He argued that the attack was launched instead by the rebels to draw the United States into their conflict. He had members of his Duma reach out to members of Congress, urging them to vote against the war authorization resolution. And, he wrote an anti-war article in the New York Times which appropriated the mushy rhetoric of Obama himself and his left wing base*.

At that point, Mr. Obama was flummoxed. He knew how to defeat stall fed Republican campaign consultants like Ed Gillespie and Karl Rove who make a fine living fooling campaign contributors as opposed to winning elections. But this Russian Bismarck was more than Barack had bargained for.

Then Putin delivered the master stroke: He offered to propose to Syria that they turn over their chemical weapons to an International Commission. Rather than making that offer directly to Mr. Obama, he made it to the world. Rather than insisting that Obama agree in return not to attack Syria he let the world do that. (Note: the idea had been discussed by diplomats before. And of course Obama claimed it was his idea. Others blamed Kerry. But Putin is the one who used it.)

7. OBAMA IS ENSNARED

This was the get out of jail free card Mr. Obama had been waiting for. He could grab it, march on stage and proclaim veni, vidi, vici—I came, I saw, I conquered! Then his mainstream media camp followers could gather around him and proclaim Hail Caesar! The ovation would be tremendous. The music would rise from the orchestra pit. He could do his best chin the air impression of Benito Mussolini and stare at a distant point on the horizon. Fade to black.

But then Mr. Obama did another really dumb thing and spoiled the whole scene: he backed off on his threat of a military strike, and announced that he would pursue the Putin offer with all deliberate speed. At that point Obama had no clue that he had just snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.

Granted, he was at impasse. But no competent negotiator would have handled it in that manner. The downsides of doing so were obvious at the time, and have become even more obvious since: i) Obama surrendered the leverage he had successfully established through the imminent threat of an air strike; ii) Obama compromised his first goal which was to stop the spread of chemical weapons by removing the enforcement mechanism, and now Syria will comply only to the extent Putin wants them to; iii) Obama abandoned his second goal which was to topple Assad through an air strike, leaving the rebels to a very uncertain fate; iv) Obama abandoned his third which was to send a message of deterrence to Iran, by sending instead a signal of weakness, which will now force Israel’s hand to deal with that situation unilaterally; v) Obama placed his trust in the hands of Mr. Putin, who had betrayed it on prior occasions; iv) Obama has become indebted to Mr. Putin for rescuing him from the embarrassment of a congressional defeat, which debt would have to be repaid later, to the detriment of our country; v) Obama allowed Mr. Putin to become the world hero, at his own expense, and of course ours, vi) Obama reinforced the growing impression of a super power in decline, and a coward running from his own ultimatum as he had done before.

After he accepted Putin’s offer, and announced to the world that he was taking a different direction, it dawned on Mr. Obama (or his advisors) that he had in fact surrendered his leverage, and that leverage would be needed in any ensuing negotiation over chemical weapons, lest he be led down a primrose path. People wondered why he gave a speech to the nation on Syria and Iran threatening military action after he had backed away from it. The answer is that was a futile attempt to reassert lost leverage. He insisted he was not backing away from military action but merely pausing (for an unspecified period). McCain and Graham urged that Congress conduct the war vote, to restore the leverage he needed, but by then it was too late. Obama proposed that military action be reinstituted if Syria failed to live up to its obligations, or dragged its heels as Saddam Hussein had done twenty years earlier. But Putin responded as any competent negotiatior on his side of the bargaining table would have at that point, i.e. I will not negotiate under the threat of war. Had Obama maintained his leverage, Putin, who was intent on saving Assad, would have done exactly that.

That we have tried the utmost of our friends,
Our legions are brim-full, our cause is ripe.
The enemy increaseth every day.
We, at the height, are ready to decline.
There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the current when it serves
Or lose our ventures.

De Blasio commands $75,000 fee ­ a 15-fold increase ­ after New York primary win

The New York mayoral candidate’s handlers are telling donors they can’t guarantee he’ll appear at fund-raising events unless it will bring in at least $75,000 for his campaign. It’s not unusual for candidates to raise their asking prices after a major victory like Bill de Blasio’s in the Democratic primary.

What a bloody mess. And the enemedia’s silence on this huge failure is a stunning indictment of how dangerous they are to the American people. Astonishing. Obama’s jihad has lost us a key ally in the Middle East.

The country needs and deserves to know what happened in Benghazi. But, I don’t trust the Pubs any more than the Dems to shoot straight. They are definitely gunning for Hillary on any and every issue, trying to find anything that will reduce her nationwide popularity. I definitely look for them to slant the blame for Benghazi toward her, and away from anyone else if they can find a way to do so. They have consistently accused her of involvement in a cover-up, or implied as much. Hillary has turned over all emails, classified info, cables, etc to congress. She has said that State Dept could not speak for anyone else involved, implying, I assume, that other Depts. and officials involved must answer for their own actions.

It’ll be interesting to see how much the Pubs stick to the facts of the matter, and how much they try to keep the focus on her. Hillary hasn’t even confirmed that she will run for POTUS, but they have been trying to get her out of the 2016 pic for months.

The President is running around on his latest campaign swing making speeches about how great a job he’s done on the economy and how much better it would be if the damn Republicans would just see the light. One of his favorite things to point out is the Dow Jones Industrials, and they hit a new high today.

Let me get right down to brass tacks. The economy is in a world of hurt and the stock market is being propped up by the Federal Reserve and it – along with housing – is in another bubble and they ARE going to burst. I don’t know when, but the fuse is lit and it’s just a matter of time.

I’m not terribly knowledgeable about economics, but no so-called expert I’ve heard or read recently paints an optimistic picture of the economy. But facts and figures don’t mean much to Barack and his supporters. Their MO has always been – If you don’t like the way that skunk smells, pour a little Channel No. 5 on it.

with all the problems we are having with killers getting Navy premises because of faulty background checks, with the IRS targeting Tea Party…and still no one legally charged…with all the possibilites of hacking (Snowden) and identity theft…these so called leaders still want to take us down this rabbit hole that threatens our personal security and confidentiality…

oh…one more thing…that is after they exempt and protect the Congress and their business buddies from this personal intrusion and threat…but the rest of us…the suckers that make up the middle class we will be vulnerable…and in fact, also be forced to make up the cost for all those “EXEMPTIONS” O and his buddies are getting…

By JASON MILLMAN | 9/18/13 3:20 PM EDT
With less than two weeks to go before millions can start enrolling in Obamacare, the White House and congressional opponents of the health law on Wednesday stepped up a battle over whether consumers can trust the new insurance marketplaces being built by the feds and the states.

The White House convened a high-level meeting of Cabinet and state officials on the issue Wednesday and the administration announced a series of measures to assure the public that it’s serious about fighting fraudsters who might try to capitalize on confusion over the new health care law.

The new initiatives included a call center number to report fraud concerns, as well as rapid response measures to address privacy and cybersecurity threats.

But just before the White House meeting, House Oversight and Government Reform Republicans issued a report claiming that the Obama administration has admitted to potential fraud weaknesses in Obamacare’s “navigator” program that provides on-the-ground enrollment counselors to advise consumers on their new coverage options.

The administration says those threats are overblown, but it’s also putting out tipsheets that tell consumers how to be on the alert for fraud — by warning them that navigators should never ask for money and that “no one should ask for your personal health information.”

The messaging effort from both sides came as lawmakers are fighting a larger battle over the health law’s future. House Republicans on Wednesday morning announced a plan to defund the entire health law in a must-pass government funding bill — raising the specter of a government shutdown after Sept. 30.

The White House meeting — attended by White House chief of staff Denis McDonough, Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, Attorney General Eric Holder, Federal Trade Commission Chairwoman Edith Ramirez and other state and federal officials — discussed coordinated efforts across the administration and the states to prevent and protect against consumer fraud, as well as educate the public about how to report suspected fraud in the new health insurance exchanges, scheduled to open Oct. 1.

“With new programs, new opportunities for scam artists do arise, and we have to have a very strong effort to send the message that [that] will not be tolerated,” a senior administration official told reporters on a background call.

Another senior administration official described the new anti-fraud measures as an extension of existing efforts to stamp out fraud in other programs.

The HHS Inspector General’s Office also issued a warning Wednesday about potential scammers posing as Obamacare navigators. “Legitimate enrollment assisters” will never ask for money or use the threat of legal action for not enrolling in coverage, the HHS watchdog advised.

Meanwhile, House Oversight Republicans painted a more ominous picture of potential fraud in the exchanges. Among their new report’s key claims: Federal health officials are concerned about an inability to certify individuals serving as navigators; they haven’t considered whether employees of navigator groups should undergo fingerprint and background checks; and they believe fraudsters will pose as navigators.

“Given the stories about how scammers are gearing up to take advantage of the tremendous confusion caused by Obamacare, Americans are at an increased risk of being the victim of fraud and identity theft because of the administration’s poor development of its outreach program,” the report warned.

A senior administration official pushed back on Wednesday, saying the navigator groups have been used in the past for similar enrollment efforts — and there’s “very, very little” evidence of any previous problems or any controversy surrounding their involvement. (oh really, did they have an Obama “HUB” to deal with>

“These are people who are absolutely committed to doing the right thing by the people they are servicing,” the official said, pointing out that navigator groups include food banks and social service organizations.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee last month demanded that almost half of the 104 groups awarded federal navigator grants turn over detailed information about their operations. A number of states resistant to the health law have enacted their own measures limiting the scope of the navigator program in their borders.

Republicans say rigorous oversight of the navigator program is needed to root out potential fraud from incompetent or malicious actors who’d either steal or mishandle personal information. Obamacare supporters have condemned the efforts as nothing short of sabotage, accusing opponents of putting up unnecessary roadblocks to enrolling in the new coverage.

Energy and Commerce Democrats on Wednesday said preliminary findings from the GOP’s probe of the navigator funding turned up nothing fishy. (and we have a Brooklyn bridge for you too

“Our findings make clear that there is no evidence these organizations have done anything illegal, and, on the contrary, are taking all steps to effectively and efficiently educate the American people about this new law,” said Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.).

The Obama administration will hold events the rest of the week to help assuage concerns about fraud in the new insurance marketplaces. The FTC will host a stakeholder roundtable on potential scams on Thursday, and the Justice Department will hold a Friday meeting with local law enforcement officials.

the dims and O are in such a rush to push thru their agenda and their cohorts are so in a rush to cash in on their campaign contribution investments…that they actually want to do this without background checks and fingerprinting the people who will have daily access to our most personal information…

and how do these leaders respond to these concerns ?:

“These are people who are absolutely committed to doing the right thing by the people they are servicing,” the official said, pointing out that navigator groups include food banks and social service organizations.

*********************************************

Do you feel comfortable with these people having access to your confidential information on a daily basis and we don’t even know who they are or their background…

Informed speculation mounted at Monday’s Accuracy in Media conference, which officially launched the Citizens’ Commission on Benghazi, that House Speaker John Boehner’s opposition to a Watergate-style congressional committee to investigate Benghazi stems from his knowledge of arms shipments to al-Qaeda terrorists in Libya and Syria.

The al-Qaeda terrorist attack on the American diplomatic mission at Benghazi, in Libya, on September 11, 2012, resulted in the deaths of four Americans, who were left to die, rather than be rescued, and has been called by some the “Benghazi Betrayal.”

The dead were U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens, American diplomat Sean Smith, and State Department security officers Glen Doherty and Tyrone S. Woods.

Coming just eight weeks before the 2012 presidential election, the Obama administration falsely blamed the attack on a spontaneous reaction to a video critical of Islam, rather than blaming it on al Qaeda.

Charles Woods spoke with emotion at the AIM conference about the loss of his son and asked for people not only to press for answers as to what really happened at Benghazi, but to pray for the country.

Christopher Farrell, Director of Investigations and Research for Judicial Watch, said at the conference that Obama’s lies and distortions about the attack are designed to obscure the central truth that the administration was arming al Qaeda.

“That’s what they don’t want broadcast or printed anywhere,” he said.

As incredible as it sounds, former CIA officer Clare Lopez said support for al Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood, and other Islamists groups has become the official foreign policy of the United States under Obama. She said the policy has been on display in Libya, Egypt, Syria, and the United Nations, through the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.

freespirit
September 19, 2013 at 2:54 pm
wbb, it’s good to see you. That article is excellent – a well articulated, insightful piece – chock full of dry humor.
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X 2
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This N.J. Senate Race will Validate or Destroy Obama’s Credibility
BY LORI LOCKE
SPECIAL TO NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM. OPINION
Last evening I had the pleasure of attending a very successful fundraiser sponsored by the West Jersey Tea Party in support of Steve Lonegan for Senator SNIP
The statement that made the biggest impression on me is the title of this piece, “This Senate Race will Validate or Destroy Obama’s Credibility”. He said this was not just an election between Steve Lonegan and Cory Booker. As this is the only Senate race between now and 2014, the entire country, all news crews and the White House will be watching. Cory Booker, Mayor of Newark, is the Hollywood stand-in for Barack Obama. For this Administration, it is about a National referendum on the Obama agenda. If the Democrats win, this will tell the rest of the country that New Jersey has validated Obamacare, Common Core, their Foreign Policy, and a host of other liberal issues. A win for Steve Lonegan will send the message to the rest of the country that New Jersey does not agree with the Obama agenda. It would be a set back for the Obama Administration. Lonegan could be the first Republican Senator in N.J. in 41 years! There will be two televised debates between the Candidates. The first debate will take place in Trenton is scheduled for October 4, and will be covered by ABC Affiliates. The second debate will take place at Rowan University in Glassboro on October 9, and will be covered by NBC affiliates.
This special election will be held on October 16 and will fill the seat left open by the passing of Senator Frank Lautenberg.http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/commentary/this-nj-senate-race-will-validate-or-destroy-obamas-credibility

Somewhere in the Middle East right now, Putin and Assad are sharing cigars and cognac and having a good laugh!
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Syria may miss first deadline in U.S.-Russia chemical arms deal

The ambitious agreement is challenged as indications arise that the Syrian government will not submit a toxic-stockpile inventory this weekend.

WASHINGTON ­ The ambitious U.S.-Russian deal to eliminate Syria’s chemical weapons, hailed as a diplomatic breakthrough just days ago, hit its first delay Wednesday with indications that the Syrian government will not submit an inventory of its toxic stockpiles and facilities to international inspectors by this weekend’s deadline.

The State Department signaled that it would not insist that Syrian President Bashar Assad produce the list Saturday, the end of a seven-day period spelled out in the framework deal that Washington and Moscow announced last weekend in Geneva.

A picture of the room after the democrats walked out.
==============================

Democrats Refuse to Hear Testimony from Parents of Sean Smith and Tyrone Woods, Who Died in Benghazi

The far side of the room, shown empty in the photo, belongs to the Democrats. The only Democrats who stayed were Ranking Member Elijah Cummings and Rep. Jackie Speier.

Absent further information about this mass retreat, it appears that the Democrats, having presided over these men’s deaths, do not have the decency to look their survivors in the face, if only to apologize.

Sen. Lindsey Graham is one of the strongest advocates of an American military strike against the Assad regime in Syria. He was unhappy when President Obama decided to seek congressional authorization for an attack, and then unhappy when his fellow lawmakers voiced disapproval of the president’s plan. Graham believes the diplomatic path chosen by the administration will lead to a debacle.

Given all that, Graham now says he will work with a bipartisan group of senators to craft a resolution authorizing the president to use military force — not against the Syrian regime but against Iran. In an appearance on Fox News’ Huckabee program over the weekend, Graham argued that such a resolution is essential, because American inaction in Syria will encourage Iran to go forward with its nuclear weapon program, eventually leading toward a Mideast conflagration if the U.S. doesn’t intervene.

…this is off topic…but a very good example of how our “leaders”…people we trust to do the right thing…really are corrupt, don’t give a damn…and often are just trying to push through projects – policies, etc. – as fast as they can…regardless if it will hurt the people they represent…

…regardless if it will actually endanger the people they represent…it shows are careless and unprepared…and UNINFORMED many of our officials are as they force projects that make their buddies tons of money and leave everyone else…their constitutents to fend for themselves…and extremely vulnerable and helpless…

…if you have a few minutes you might be interested in reading this short article…it reminds me so much of how the democrats and O admin forced thru Obamacare…no one even knowing what the hell was in it…or the ramifications of what they were doing…no thought to all the people who would lose their jobs…be forced into part time work and lose paid work hours and money…have their health insurance increase…or have all their closely held private information just open to the nearest “navigator”…a “navigator” that might have come from the local food bank…

How the Hollywood Fault Made Millennium’s Future Uncertain, and L.A. a Laughingstock
By Gracie Zheng Thursday, Sep 19 2013

The Los Angeles City Council rushed through its approval of the Millennium skyscrapers in Hollywood amidst fiery opposition, ignoring an unusual warning from California’s top geologist that a major earthquake fault study had to be undertaken before permits could legally be issued.

Now, other killer fault–riddled California cities are marveling at the blunder that has prompted Hollywood residents to sue the city of L.A. and Millennium Hollywood LLC for knowingly planning 35- and 39-story towers atop a suspected “rupture fault” capable of opening the Earth, splitting buildings in half — and causing massive death.

The Hayward Fault runs 50 miles through the East Bay, near the Oakland Hills and through the Oakland Zoo and Mills College. Like the Hollywood Fault, it’s a rupture fault that can rip open the Earth — not just violently shake it like typical dangerous faults in L.A. It’s a “known killer” that produced a 7-magnitude quake in 1868.

“If a project like [Millennium] were proposed in Oakland, before a decision could be made on the project, we would require geological study to pinpoint exactly where the active fault is within this larger fault zone,” says Ed Manasse, Oakland’s strategic planning manager.

In fact, under the state’s Alquist-Priolo Act, to avoid catastrophic deaths from rupture quakes, no new buildings intended for human use can be built atop, or within 50 feet of, a rupture fault.

In the city of Hayward, Gary Lepori of the Development Services Department draws a parallel between the behavior by L.A. leaders in not abiding by the Alquist-Priolo Act and the bizarre hubbub in Benidorm, Spain, when news broke in August about a 47-story skyscraper built without elevators. Reports of that civic screwup later turned out to be untrue.

Still, Lepori ventured, “Do those kinds of mistakes happen to a degree in Hollywood? They let things get too far before they looked at stuff. Make sure it’s safe.”

It’s not yet clear who let the Millennium get too far, or why.

In July, Gov. Jerry Brown’s appointee, powerful State Geologist John Parrish, alerted L.A. City Council president Herb Wesson that the Millennium Towers might fall directly within Hollywood’s “rupture fault” zone — a geologically treacherous area known to geologists but not the public. It is bounded, roughly, by Las Palmas Avenue, Gower Street, Franklin Avenue and Carlos Street just north of Hollywood Boulevard.

Like the Hayward Fault, it is capable of a killer, 7-magnitude quake. Yet its existence has remained a virtual secret among civic boosters and city leaders bent on remaking the aging area — and luring thousands of new residents and office workers.

One $200 million residential-retail complex, Blvd 6200, is half-finished. It may well rest — illegally and precariously — within 50 feet of the fault along Carlos Street.

Experts don’t know what to make of the antics at City Hall. “If a building sits on top of a fault that breaks the surface,” Parrish says, “it’s very dangerous … because the ground is splitting in two.”

For years, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, then–Hollywood City Councilman Eric Garcetti and city planning director Michael LoGrande — cheered on by the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce — have pressed for high-rise density in Hollywood.

Then, this year, lawyers hired by residents fighting the Millennium skyscrapers obtained stunning emails showing that L.A. City Geologist Dana Prevost met with a Millennium project team in 2012 and discussed the fact that a quake fault might run right through the controversial twin skyscraper site at Vine and Yucca streets.

Prevost never went public about this knowledge. In fact, the emails showed, Prevost privately admitted to the Millennium people that he’d already “granted one modification in the past on another project that allowed them to build right adjacent to the fault line,” probably referring to Blvd 6200.

In Hayward, Oakland and 103 other California cities containing more than 5,000 miles of active fault traces, the state is responsible for mapping and zoning their suspected faults.

“All of those [cities] are very good about honoring those zones and enforcing special studies for faults within the zones,” State Geologist Parrish says.

In Oakland, officials begin by definitively determining if a project for human occupancy is within a fault zone, then making sure it’s at least 50 feet from any rupture fault.

“If we don’t know if it’s [on top of an actual] fault, then the city of Oakland wouldn’t be able to approve the project,” Manasse stresses. “Individual cities can make certain parts of the regulations more strict, but they can’t make them less strict.”

It is the state’s responsibility to map such earthquake faults and zones, as it has done meticulously statewide. Confusion reigns over why a definitive fault zone was not drawn for Hollywood — a dense, old community perched atop a potential time bomb — while rural areas facing far lesser threats were fully studied and zoned.

Years passed, and Villaraigosa, LoGrande and Councilman Garcetti arrived on the scene, pushing their density dreams for Hollywood with far taller, bigger buildings containing far more people.

Using incomplete boundaries and fault lines mapped years ago in Hollywood by state geologists, city officials started guessing where the fault did and did not go, approving projects — and failing to conduct strictly required, geological site investigations to make certain no new buildings were erected atop or within 50 feet of the fault.

Then, in July, having no idea of the precise location of the fault, the L.A. City Council blindly voted, 13-0, to approve the twin skyscrapers on a block that’s suspected to fall within or next to the earthquake zone.

The existing state geological maps show dotted instead of solid lines where the quake zone is believed to run below Franklin, Las Palmas, Carlos, Gower and other streets.

Now, Parrish and a state team have stepped in to investigate and map the Hollywood Earthquake Zone and its faults.

As the Weekly reported in July, three other big projects next to or atop the suspected rupture fault have already been granted various approvals by city officials:

—The elegant, massive Blvd 6200 complex with more than 500 luxury residential units and extensive retail between Carlos and Hollywood Boulevard near Argyle Avenue is partly built and may not be fit for habitation if the state discovers that it’s within 50 feet of the rupture fault. If that’s the case, the cost for lawsuits — which might be borne by city taxpayers — could rise into the stratosphere. Of course, the developers could be liable, too. In their environmental impact report, the Blvd 6200 developers insisted that the nearest fault zone to their project by the Pantages Theater was the Newport-Inglewood Fault — five miles away in Culver City.

—6230 Yucca St., a 16-story mixed-use tower of apartments and retail, appears to sit illegally inside the fault zone. It has not been built but was approved by the apparently clueless, avidly pro-density, L.A. City Planning Commission.

—Argyle Hotel at 1800 N. Argyle, a 16-story hotel with 225 hotel rooms, 6,000 square feet of meeting space and 3,000 square feet of residential space, appears to sit next to the fault zone. It has not been built but was approved by the apparently equally clueless City Planning Department.

Aaron Epstein, 83, has lived in Hollywood since 1934; he owns the charming old Artisan’s Patio on Hollywood Boulevard (City Historic Landmark No. 453) and pitched in $5,000 to sue the city and developer to stop Millennium from being built. His father, Louis Epstein, owned famed Pickwick Bookshop on the boulevard, now gone.

“What upsets me is our … elected officials at City Hall,” Epstein says. “We have six neighborhood council organizations surrounding the project. Five of them have voted against the project.” He notes that just one neighborhood council wanted the skyscrapers — the Central Hollywood Neighborhood Council, dominated by the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, whose vice president, Laurie Goldman, is a consultant to the Millennium developers.

Epstein is fed up with City Hall, and says Hollywood’s District 13 City Councilman Mitch O’Farrell is “representing an out-of-state developer,” and if so should “resign from office. He has no business saying he is a representative when he is just voting for whoever makes the biggest contribution to his political campaign.”

***************************************************************

this is a real, true, current story regarding the heart and center of Los Angeles…to give it context, this area is the center of Hollywood and where the Kodak building is where they have the Oscars…

I have mentioned in the past, that I went thru the Northridge earthquake while living in Santa Monica…that quake actually split the buildings next to me in half…no kidding, tall, new apartment buildings…in half…

that Northridge quake lasted about 17 seconds and took down five freeways and caused billions…billions of dollars in damage…about 57 people died and over 9000 were injured and many, many lost their homes…including me…that quake changed many lives forever…

and with that history and all the recent studies that exist…

the idea that the officials in Los Angeles…with Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and the LA city council…democrats…leading the charge to endanger people this way is UNFORGIVEABLE…and criminal…

…it is like the micro to the macro of the national dims and O admin…leading us over a cliff…

Pope Francis is a good man, but he has to learn to be a little more sophisticated when dealing with the media. The anti-Catholics among them love to use his words to undermine the Church’s teachings. So often his interviews require further explanation. Such as . .

World’s top climate scientists told to ‘cover up’ the fact that the Earth’s temperature hasn’t risen for the last 15 years

Scientists working on the most authoritative study on climate change were urged to cover up the fact that the world’s temperature hasn’t risen for the last 15 years, it is claimed.

A leaked copy of a United Nations report, compiled by hundreds of scientists, shows politicians in Belgium, Germany, Hungary and the United States raised concerns about the final draft.

Published next week, it is expected to address the fact that 1998 was the hottest year on record and world temperatures have not yet exceeded it, which scientists have so far struggled to explain.

The report is the result of six years’ work by UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which is seen as the world authority on the extent of climate change and what is causing it – on which governments including Britain’s base their green policies.

If you are keeping a list of impeachable charges against Barack Hussein Obama, you may want to add this one to the list. Congress passed a bill and Obama signed it into law. Then Obama defies the law he just signed.

The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has had a position of public advocate that works on behalf of illegal aliens facing deportation. In February 2012, Andrew Lorenzen-Strait held that position. Earlier this year, Congress passed HR 933 that eliminated Strait’s position saying they no longer wanted to pay a federal employee to defend illegals. In March 2013, President Obama signed HR 933 which defunded and eliminated the position of public advocate for illegals.

But you know how Obama feels about illegals facing deportation don’t you? They are Democratic voters, even if they do vote illegally. He can’t have the government deporting his party’s support base.

In a defiance against Congress and the law that he signed, Obama had the position held by Strait changed to read deputy assistant director of custody programs and community outreach. The job description is basically the same as that of the public advocate and Strait continues to perform the same duties he did before, mostly defending illegals facing deportation.

House Republicans passed their stopgap funding bill Friday to keep government open while terminating the new health care law, setting up a final showdown next week with Senate Democrats and President Obama who have firmly rejected that.

The 230-189 vote, which split almost exclusively along party lines, is the precursor to the big action next week, when the Senate is expected to strip out the health care provisions and send the bill back to the House — where Republicans will have to decide whether they can accept it at that point.

All sides are racing a Sept. 30 deadline, which is when current government funding runs out. The new measure would fund the government through Dec. 15, essentially at last year’s levels, and would leave the budget sequesters in place.

But Republicans also attached two amendments — one to direct how government spending is prioritized in the event the Treasury Department bumps up against its debt limit, and another that strips out funding for the health care law, which would effectively stop it.

“The American people don’t want the government shut down, and they don’t want Obamacare,” said House Speaker John A. Boehner, who rallied with fellow Republicans after the vote in a show of unity that seemed designed to quell speculation about a rebellion within the House Republican Conference.

Republicans said the move was designed to put some Democratic senators on the spot. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor named several who are up for re-election next year, including Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu and Alaska Sen. Mark Begich.

Democrats said the bill was an outrage that exposed Republicans’ true intention of trying to force a government shutdown.

“It is a wolf in wolf’s clothing,” said Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat. “Either you don’t know what you’re doing or this is one of the most intentional acts of brutality you’ve cooked up.”

Rep. Nita Lowey, the top Democrat on the House spending committee, said limiting government funding now would prevent federal authorities from being able to help out as Colorado recovers from devastating floods.

They urged the GOP to negotiate with Democrats to raise taxes in order to spend more.

Republicans countered that if they’d wanted to shut down government they wouldn’t have brought any bill to the floor.

“We are pragmatists. We know we have to pass bills to fund government. Thus this bill,” said House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers.

Zippity do dah!
In blow to immigration reform, House `gang of seven’ bill looks dead
By Greg Sargent, Published: September 20 at 3:58 pmE-mail the writer
…“It doesn’t appear that we’re going to move forward with the group of seven,” Dem Rep. Luis Gutierrez, a key player on immigration as a member of the gang, said in an interview with me. “The process is stalled. I don’t believe we’re going to produce a bill anytime soon.”
This undermines the already dwindling prospects for reform, because the House “gang of seven” plan — which would provide a path to citizenship but is significantly to the right of the Senate bill — was seen as a comprehensive plan Republicans who genuinely want to solve the immigration problem just might coalesce around. (The gang of seven plan would reportedly provide for a probationary period for the 11 million, in which they’d admit wrongdoing, and onerous conditions for the path to citizenship, which would be 15 years long….)

Darrell Issa is scheduled to travel to Libya next week as part of his investigation into the attack last year on the Benghazi consulate, according to documents obtained by POLITICO.

The California Republican, who chairs the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, did not invite Democratic counterparts on the trip, which has been in the works for over a week and begins on Sunday with stops in Italy and Egypt.

I couldn’t live in San Francisco with her as my representative and I seriously question those that live there now. My question to any that live there on this site –

…”How could you continue to vote this woman into office? Is there NO other candidate there that could run against her?”…

As I listened to her go on and on about the greatness of this president and how hard she was trying to EQUATE President Clinton with bumbles created a visceral reaction in me. My bowels became upset. She is an example of a woman I would vote AGAINST if she was ever in the running to be any more than a county administrator. Definitely NOT for president, or governor, or mayor, or county commissioner, or class president. Those positions require a degree of integrity that I really don’t think she has….

Well, as unprofessional (and totally narcissistic) as that statement was, at least Barack didn’t say the Pubs were “trying to get all up in my $hit”. Could it be that he is growing into the office? lol

Well, as unprofessional (and totally narcissistic) as that statement was, at least Barack didn’t say the Pubs were “trying to get all up in my $hit”. Could it be that he is growing into the office? lol
_____________________________________________________

Yet, free……he hasn’t said it YET. He has another 3 years and I am sure he won’t disappoint in further trashing the office of POTUS.

foxy: Just like Admin said all along
—————————–
Mercifully, yes. It pays to have faith. TY admin.

I’m mired in another mail project and although I’m most grateful for the equipment I do have to work with, it is not at all sophisticated by today’s standards. Therefore, the word “tedious” is accurate, and a reminder of what others have gone through for us, is appropriate. Set in 1750’s Pennsylvania, “George Washington’s First War,” available at http://www.paladincom.com/ordernow.shtml or national historical gift shops, for $19.95.

Nasty’s county is San Francisco. Not only the folks in SF have her on the ballot, but voters way beyond that area have her on the ballot, I think the entire state. She doesn’t run for some local San Francisco office, but for Rep. of the House…so are we all going to leave the state because Nasty is in the House, nope.

Unfortunately, she is the only woman in the US to hold such a high office, so I’m sure some of her votes from females is because of that. I voted for her before the fall of the Democratic Party, not since.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stayed quiet about a possible 2016 White House run during a Miami appearance Thursday – but she made a quick quip when asked what it would take for the country to elect its first woman president, The Miami Herald reported.

“Well, it’ll take a crazy person,” Clinton joked, getting laughs as she appeared before the American Society of Travel Agents’ global convention, the newspaper reported.

Clinton said “I hope we break that final glass ceiling,” but said nothing about her plans.

You know I wrote my post right after I saw the video that VotingHillary posted of that woman pulling a Lewinsky on bumbles. I reacted quite sharply, but I really bear no ill will to the people of her district. She must have done SOME things for her district else she would not have been re-elected so many times. Hopefully, eyes are being opened and the democratic process can ultimately prevail. 🙂

Can you believe TV did not tell us this?
9/20/13. Billionaire investor George Soros, 83, will marry 42-year-old Tamiko Bolton today, followed by a huge party at his Caramoor Estate in Bedford, with 500 guests.
We’re told the couple will say their vows in front of a select group of friends and family before they celebrate with hundreds from 4:30 p.m. onward.
Those expected include World Bank president Jim Yong Kim and Toomas Hendrik Ilves, president of Estonia; Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, president of Liberia; and Edi Rama, prime minister of Albania.
Also there will be Paul Tudor Jones II and Rep. Nancy Pelosi. Festivities started Friday night with a dinner at Le Bernardin, followed by cocktails with a few hundred guests at MoMA.

Poopsie cannot be happy that the twit writing up Soros’ wedding referred to her as Rep. Such a common title. > 400 at any given point.
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Storms are approaching, and in the process of shutting down, came across another “grass roots” reference. gagMeWithAspoon.
Mass. governor to hit campaign trail for Cory Booker
9/21/13. Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick is set to hit the campaign trail in New Jersey.
On Tuesday, Patrick will stump for Newark Mayor Cory Booker, a Democrat running for the U.S. Senate. Booker and Republican Steven Lonegan are vying to replace the late Sen. Frank Lautenberg, who died in June.
Next Saturday, Patrick travels to Dallas to deliver the keynote address at the Texas Democratic Party’s Barbara Jordan Legacy Dinner.
Patrick is using money from his political action committee to pay for the trips.
Patrick formed the Together PAC, in 2011 to help pay for travels around the country campaigning on behalf of President Barack Obama .
Patrick said he now wants to “repurpose” his PAC to focus on supporting what he called “grassroots, conviction-based politics here in the commonwealth and elsewherehttp://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2013/09/mass_governor_to_hit_campaign_trail_for_cory_booker.html#incart_river_default

Foreigners were among the casualties. France’s president said that two French women were killed. American citizens were reported injured but not killed in the attack, the State Department said Saturday, but did not release further details.

As the attack began shortly after noon Saturday, the al-Qaida-linked gunmen asked the victims they had cornered if they were Muslim: Those who answered yes were free to go, several witnesses said. The non-Muslims were not.

Somalia’s Islamic extremist group al-Shabab claimed responsibility and said the attack was retribution for Kenyan forces’ 2011 push into Somalia. The rebels threatened more attacks

I doubt that the al Qaeda fighters plan to come out of this thing alive. So even if the fighters are killed, they took 39 people (so far) with them. How many more will it be when the weapons they will be using are so much more advanced?

Can you believe TV did not tell us this?
9/20/13. Billionaire investor George Soros, 83, will marry 42-year-old Tamiko Bolton today, followed by a huge party at his Caramoor Estate in Bedford, with 500 guests.
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Can we presume that she’s marrying him for love, and not that he has more than 1,000 million dollars?? You betcha!

Soros: “Honey cakes, look our honeymoon bed will be made of $100 bills”.

Sarah Palin at Breitbart:
“…Let’s be clear. Republicans in Congress aren’t advocating a government shutdown. That’s why they voted in the House to fully fund our bureaucracy while defunding Obamacare. The conservatives in Congress are listening to the majority of Americans who do not want Obamacare. Following the will of the people is apparently a novel idea in D.C. these days….”http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/09/21/palin-ted-cruz-defund-obamacare

Sarah Palin at Breitbart:
“…Let’s be clear. Republicans in Congress aren’t advocating a government shutdown. That’s why they voted in the House to fully fund our bureaucracy while defunding Obamacare. The conservatives in Congress are listening to the majority of Americans who do not want Obamacare. Following the will of the people is apparently a novel idea in D.C. these days….”http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/09/21/palin-ted-cruz-defund-obamacare
———————–
The elites are running for the theater exist screaming fire. They can afford to buy the best insurance in the world. Obama care does not affect them. But OMG a government shut down . . . that could lead to the parade of horribles which have occurred as a result of the failure to pass cap and trade i.e. melting of the polar caps, gun confiscation, i.e. armed insurrection across the nation, sequester, i.e. a collapse of government services and food shortage, i.e. another Black Friday on the stock market worse than 1929 which would put a damper on their next around the world vacation. Someday they may be right. But like every other boy that cried wolf they have a credibility problem, made even worse by their utter failure to sell the American People on this law and by sucking the wealth of the nation out of the pockets of taxpayers and into their own pockets, literally robbing Peter to pay Paul.

Herein lies the problem, once indoctrinated and brainwashed, you cannot reform these maniacs and the biggest problem is the Western Govts thinks they can handle and reform these people….YOU CANNOT, they have no remorse, they will just kill as their indoctrination is to kill anyone who does not submit to their religious beliefs. they only response is to remove them and stop this namby pamby shit, dirtnap the bastards when you get the chance. humanity will thank you for it and screw the amnesty muppets and tell the pc crowd to take a hike.

Working in concert with dims everywhere, AP is trying to turn this defund strategy which is anathema to their shut the fuck up and go to the back of the bus republicans into Armageddon for the nation. Well . . . . . we are tired of your threats, really sick of them, and come to think of it AP we are sickest of all of you. Go fuck yourself.

A bully backs you in a corner. If you run he will come after you. If you stand your ground he may win–but you will make him pay. Next time, he will do a little cost benefit analysis for himself before he takes you on. Next time he brings a gun, you may bring a Howitzer. Arms races are like that. This is new for the Republicans. Perhaps they know that if they avoid this fight, they will lose the base. And where the elites are concerned, their interest is NOT for the nation. It is for the stock market. Just talk to them awhile about a government shutdown and you will find that that is their main concern. Yea, its personal. And its bullshit because they have the financial wherewithall to weather the storm, and the one thing about stock markets is they do recover, whereas Obamacare is like herpes–you never get rid of it.

If these dumb ass Republicans did not want to be backed into this corner–if that is really what it is, I would argue the opposite, but if they did not want to be where they are now, then they should have gone along with this Stalinist program rather than banging the symbols, and voting against it, thinking that votes to do not have consequences, and that they would never be called upon to put their money where their mouth it. I guess what I am saying is the RINO begs the question what is a conservative, if they will not fight for limited government. We know they do not support the conservative line on social issues. Evidently they do not support it on economic issues either. So what is left that makes them claim to be conservative. Nada. Fucking hyprocrites. Here’s looking at you Lisa Murkoski/

Sen Paul is annoying me as a gnat would right now. Not only throwing water on defunding Ocare, but in another venue. He has co-opted my email from something-or-other and sent a right-to-work petition. So far so good. But he asks for donation before one can complete the petition. Rude. Evidently on behalf of National Right to Work Committee.

The gnat Obama at CBC dinner: Days after mass shootings in both of his hometowns, President Barack Obama urged his most ardent supporters Saturday “to get back up and go back at it” and help push stalled legislation out of Congress so dangerous people won’t get their hands on guns. “We can’t rest until all of our children can go to school or walk down the street free from the fear that they will be struck down by a stray bullet,” Obama said in a keynote speech to the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s annual awards dinner.
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/09/22/obama-urges-new-gun-law-push-at-cbc-dinner

Not concerned that its now two military massacres.

I hope the GOP is learning something. Marino solid with people on most things. Wonder if polls are convincing some to tilt right, give some ground. Or is there deal that GOP will let Ocare in if immigration is dropped.

holdthemaccountable
September 22, 2013 at 9:16 am
—————-
That is a suspicion some of us have had about Rand Paul all along. He is not like his dad, whom I respect for his integrity even if I disagree with him on a particular point. And the young people who supported him are orders of magnitude smarter than they young drones who fell for the Obama act. I do not know what exactly it is about Rand–maybe just a feeling, that when it comes to a real fight, as opposed to a lecture on the political philosophy of limited government or foreign wars, he would be running for the exits just like the RINOS do. Conservatism should be made of sterner stuff, and in his case, I must confess that I doubt that it is, even though I would like to believe that he is the real thing.

Not a day goes by that Obama fails to go out on the stump and offer some fatherly advice to the nation on some arachane subject. Not a day goes by that people who know how the cow ate the cabbage ignore the lying prick. Not a day goes by that mainstream media fails to kiss ass. Not a day goes by that discriminating viewers change the channel so they no longer must listen the their lies. The equation is in balance, I suppose.

Herein lies the problem, once indoctrinated and brainwashed, you cannot reform these maniacs and the biggest problem is the Western Govts thinks they can handle and reform these people….YOU CANNOT, they have no remorse, they will just kill as their indoctrination is to kill anyone who does not submit to their religious beliefs.
——————-
Gosh Moon. I almost didn’t read the article. I am glad I did, because I thought from your lead in that you were talking about Bots in general, or jurnolisters like Ben Smith.

Is Cruz on TV now? God Bless Ted Cruz Chris Wallace @Foxnews is Attacking Him -It’s Up To Us We The People-Crash The Phone Lines in DC -Let the Hear Your Voice
[I’ve got 2 get back to mailing.]
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My gut tells me a couple things about this guy. First, the real issue for him beyond Obamacare is taking back the nation. Second, that he will awaken the sleeping giant, meaning the nation, to the undeniable truth that the Washington elites are destroying the middle class, for fun and profit, because they can. Why else would complacent, and utterly self serving mouthpieces like Tom Browkaw (who sits on Soros boards, by the way) call Washington DC “the New Versailles”? It is like what Fleet Admiral Bull Halsey said about the Battle of the Coral Sea in WW II–a tactical loss, a strategic victory.

Sarah and Ted currently on same thought.
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Super PAC ad to ‘fire Boehner’ airs night before House vote to defund Obamacare
The Speaker of the House is caught between a rock and a hard place inside a case made of diamond atop a minefield, and despite acquiescing to a campaign to defund Obamacare, grassroots political forces are calling for his job. Again. The Revive America PAC, which bills itself as a super PAC that exclusively reserves its support for ”strong conservative candidates who have the ‘guts’ and integrity to stand up to the Washington, D.C. establishment,” has begun airing a TV and radio advertisement to pink-slip Speaker John Boehner. Buzzfeed reported seeing the ad on television Thursday night — the night before the House approved a temporary spending bill that withheld funds for the President’s floundering health care law, an initiative spurred by the grassroots Right.
“We need urgent action today by thousands of Americans to fire John Boehner,” the TV ad says. “After Nancy Pelosi rammed through Obamacare, America hired John Boehner to fight Obama. But after three years of secret backroom deals with Obama, Boehner has betrayed our trust. He helped Obama implement Obamacare, and now he refuses to defund it.”
For context in regard to the latter claim, the ad was posted to Revive America’s YouTube page September 3, before the plan to continue government funding and defund Obamacare adopted in the House today was even introduced. In addition to the Friday House vote to withhold Obamacare funding, the House has voted more than 40 times to fully or partially repeal Obamacare. Eight of the law’s provisions have either been outright repealed or had funds rescinded, including the frivolous 1099 reporting requirement for small businesses, and the CLASS Act, an inevitably doomed, financially impossible insurance program for long-term health care. The ad went on to criticize Boehner for blocking the creation of a special investigative committee on Benghazi. “It’s just enough to make you sick,” the narrator says.
Watch the ad below:http://redalertpolitics.com/2013/09/20/super-pac-ad-to-fire-boehner-airs-night-before-house-vote-to-defund-obamacare/

On Sunday, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin called on Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace to release the names of the “top Republicans” that sent him opposition research on Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) to “hammer” Cruz before his appearance on the program to discuss defunding Obamacare.

Herein lies the problem, once indoctrinated and brainwashed, you cannot reform these maniacs and the biggest problem is the Western Govts thinks they can handle and reform these people….YOU CANNOT, they have no remorse, they will just kill as their indoctrination is to kill anyone who does not submit to their religious beliefs. they only response is to remove them and stop this namby pamby shit, dirtnap the bastards when you get the chance. humanity will thank you for it and screw the amnesty muppets and tell the pc crowd to take a hike.

_______________

When one is taught from birth that another group or society is an abomination to one’s god, and encouraged to kill the hated ones in service to and in the name of that god, it’s pretty difficult to lose that mindset. It’s much more difficult when, as a young adult, the hater identifies with a group of like minded zealots. Two principles then become operative: 1) Early childhood training and indoctrination, 2) group think and pressure – proven to be a very powerful motivator, capable of making individuals commit cruel acts they would never consider committing without this pressure.

Those who believe that this can be changed by inclusiveness are just begging for trouble.

Not a day goes by that Obama fails to go out on the stump and offer some fatherly advice to the nation on some arachane subject. Not a day goes by that people who know how the cow ate the cabbage ignore the lying prick. Not a day goes by that mainstream media fails to kiss ass. Not a day goes by that discriminating viewers change the channel so they no longer must listen the their lies. The equation is in balance, I suppose.
____________

Just think how much wasted time and energy would be saved if the cow were kept out of the garden in the first place. Cabbages don’t grow well in the mean streets of Chicago. Possibly, the cow should be confined to that city. I hear the neighborhoods there need organizing, and guns there – many of which are not legally obtained to begin with – are in need of controlling.

On Sunday, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin called on Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace to release the names of the “top Republicans” that sent him opposition research on Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) to “hammer” Cruz before his appearance on the program to discuss defunding Obamacare.

An Epitaph to Our Corrupt Political Class? Maybe now, maybe later, but it is coming. One day their Versaille on the Potomac may look more like Detroit. As they steal this nation blind, there will come a point when they run out of other people’s money. At that point they will be staring into what HG Wells called the blood red eyes of a caveman.
——————————————

America the Perverse

By Larry Johnson on September 22, 2013 at 12:25 PM in Current Affairs

America is headed for disaster. We have lost our way and are engaged in self-delusion on a massive scale. Consider the following:

We celebrate a soaring stock market even thought the actual economic facts show low economic growth and a shrinking work force. The stock market ticked up in response to news that the Federal Reserve forecasts a more dismal economy going forward and promised to continue pumping cash into the flailing economy.

We declare a war on terrorism but Barack Obama decides to provide weapons to so-called rebels in Syria who are committing acts of terrorism against the Government and people of Syria. In other words, we are helping fund terrorism but reserve the right to punish other countries who sponsor terrorism that we declare is unacceptable.

Barack Obama, as a Senator, railed against a President for daring to raise the Federal debt ceiling, is now the champion of raising the debt ceiling far above anything proposed by George W. Bush. Taking his hypocrisy to a new extreme, Obama, with the full throated support of media, declares that any Republican who balks at raising the debt ceiling is keen on bankrupting America.

Despite promising that, “if you like your health care you can keep your health care,” the reality of Obama’s ironically named Affordable Care Act is spurring companies to shift full-time employees to part-time or suspending coverage for spouses and children. So, with a majority of Americans opposed to Obama Care, when Republicans move to try to stop its implementation they find themselves accused of jeopardizing America’s credit.

These are just four recent items that reveal a willingness on the part of our political class to ignore hypocrisy and pretend that a pile of fetid feces is really a tasty bowl of chocolate pudding. But you can’t, no matter how hard you try, shine shit. All you end up doing is smearing it around.

The current political class could not repeatedly, obsessively convince the country of its lies without media, a willing and complicit partner.

This applies to the left wing media – that would convince us that everything wrought by Barack is pure and good, and in the best interest of people everywhere. He wants to buy the world a coke – or is that some coke? Well, either way, if Barack brings it is all good.

It also applies to the right wing media, who lacking a world view of their own, save that the reproductive systems of women must be controlled, two guys or women cannot be involved romantically, and that the anyone who doesn’t agree is a crazy liberal atheist – or worse, a non-Christian, just rails on and on about how bad the Clintons are.

The current political class could not repeatedly, obsessively convince the country of its lies without media, a willing and complicit partner.
———————
ABSOLUTELY POSITIVELY NO DOUBT ABOUT IT FREESPIRIT. THAT IS THE GODS TRUTH. THAT IS WHY WE MUST MOVE HEAVEN AND EARTH–MEANING DO WHATEVER WE CAN WITHIN THE LIMITS OF THE LAW TO DISCREDIT THOSE SCOUNDRELS. IN THIS PAPER I WROTE ON SYRIA WHICH I AM SENDING TO SELECT MEMBERS OF CONGRESS, I MAKE THIS POINT IN THE BEGINNING:

It is important for the American People to know the truth here. Consequently, we must look beyond the velvet fog of mainstream media. Since 2007, mainstream media (except for FOX) has enjoyed an incestuous relationship with Obama that dictates what they reveal, what they report, and how they report it. They have abdicated the role of journalist in a democracy. Hence, they are NOT credible.

Therefore, I have gone to authoritative sources on the internet, the foreign press and Foreign Affairs Magazine to discover the truth about Mr. Obama’s Fine Syrian Misadventure. I will begin with some general observations about negotiation, and what it takes to be successful. Then I will identify our real bargaining goals, critique the performance of Mr. Obama, and expose the cunning of Mr. Putin.

Mr. Obama’s Fine Syrian Misadventure illustrates the fundamental difference between amateurs and professionals when it comes to the art of negotiation. And where does that leave Mr. Obama? The liveliest intellects of our time have assured us that he is the smartest man who ever lived. And, it must be true because they keep saying it. But I must confess that I see very little supporting proof, either in this case, or elsewhere. Like Dr. Kissinger, I see only weakness. When it comes to negotiation, he is a rank amateur. And more is the pity for that.

How different from President Ronald Reagan. Granted, Dutch was never really bi-racial—any more than Elizabeth Warren is American Indian (but Reagan never pretended to be). Nor was he the no show never published Editor of the Harvard Law Review. Nor was he ever to my knowledge a community organizer.

But Reagan was something Obama was not, i.e. President of the Hollywood Screen Actors Guild–which is a union. Therefore he was a professional negotiator–make no mistake about that. Indeed, from time to time he talked about opening offers, leverage, and other tools of the trade. Furthermore, when he told you something you could believe it. Finally, Reagan’s negotiating ability was such that he was able to achieve a breakthrough arms control agreement (SALT) with the Russian Leader of his era, the estimable Mikail Gorbachev. That was a marriage of equals, whereas this one is not. As in: “Tell Vladimir I will have more ‘flexibility’ after my election”—Barack Obama

How does a professional negotiator differ from an amateur? Simple: An amateur looks at a strike deadline and sees only a red flag. Therefore, he turns and runs like Mr. Obama did. By contrast, a professional negotiator looks at that same deadline, and sees a tool he can use to accomplish his bargaining objectives. One that allows him to apply the leverage he has against a fixed target rather than a constantly moving one. Without a firm deadline, the adversary can filibuster, buy time and create counter leverage.

If the adversary is Assad, he will use that time to move his weapons to safer venues where they are harder to attack, claim he is fighting terrorism, and win the Syrian civil war. If he is the Supreme Leader of Iran, he will use that time to complete the construction of a nuclear bomb, promote terrorism and improve his public image much as Putin has done. The net effect will be to shift the balance of power in the Middle East away from the United States and its allies, to Iran and Russia. Israel remembers the Holocaust and is unwilling to accept a nuclear Iran. Mr. Obama however believes a nuclear Iran is inevitable. During the 2012 election, he forced Israel to call off its planned strike against Iran’s nuclear facility. Thus, Obama’s failure to conduct an air strike against Assad to put pressure on Iran was to Israel what Brutus’s dagger was to Caesar: the unkindest cut of all.

To the United States however, Mr. Obama’s Fine Syrian Misadventure presents a different problem, namely a failure of Executive leadership, which leads a nation to the death of a thousand cuts. Consequently, when a long term Democratic Congressman like Irish Jim Moran of the Commonwealth of Virginia wells up like a pufferfish and gives us this blarney that everything is coming up roses and we will all be fine if we simply ignore our lying eyes and learn to trust government (meaning of course Obama) I am reminded of what an old Mafia Teamster boss told a young management negotiator who tried to sell him the party line of the company, a lifetime ago:

“The Wall Street Journal reports today on the latest “Obamacare” glitch to emerge—this one striking at the heart of the law’s coverage expansions:
Less than two weeks before the launch of insurance marketplaces created by the federal health overhaul, the government’s software can’t reliably determine how much people need to pay for coverage, according to insurance executives and people familiar with the program. SNIP The Journal’s report reveals multiple ironies….”

Report: International Contingent, Including Americans, Among The Terrorists
@HSM_PressOffice, a twitter account now suspended, alleged there were 3 Americans among the terrorists, and now CNN is also reporting there are Americans among the terrorists:

Miller said the younger generation is non-judgmental. Maybe they need to step in the lions cage to learn that making judgments in dire situations can be the difference between death and survival.

Billow said it is because people know they made a mistake voting for Obama. Rather than admit it however, they choose to shut their eyes to what is happening.

__________

I don’t believe the younger gen is “non-judgmental, as Miller asserts. I think it has more to do with their being the lowest of the low info voters – at least a significant portion of them are. They want cool. They want diverse. Above all, they want their peers to think that they embrace cool and diverse. They are where some of us were in 2008. I (we) thought the Dems are inclusive. They were against oppression of all groups who have not historically enjoyed equal rights. (That assumption right there was BS moment number one for me. The Dems don’t give a rat’s patootie about women’s rights)

The youth crowd, lacking any real info on which to base their judgement of Barack just fall back on the standard “at least he’s not a Republican” view.

In other words – they don’t know a damn thing. They are as much about image and half-truths as is Barack.

Top Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin has been given an ultimatum: dump serial-sexting hubby Anthony Weiner, or get out of Clintontown.

“Huma has a choice to make,” a close associate tells New York magazine. “Does she go with Anthony, or does she go with Hillary?”

Abedin’s decision over whether to leave the “Clinton bubble,” where she’s seen as Hillary’s most trusted aide, has emerged as “the biggest question among Hillary’s circle” as the former Secretary of State mulls a 2016 run for the White House, the magazine reports.

Hillary to Huma: Dump Weiner or you’re out
——————–
Admiral Hyman Rickover was the father of our nuclear submarine program. US Naval Academy ’22. He spent 50 years in the service, was a little off for most of his career (not too uncommon with geniuses), toward the end of his life married a woman who was decades younger and an anti nuke fanatic. So nature took its course as it often does and viola the head of the nuclear program was suddenly anti-nuke. Well, this was more than Kissinger and others could abide, so he had to go. The cousin of the late Princess Grace was then Secretary of the Navy and it was his job to retire the old gentleman–he told me what that was like.

When Rickover was in his prime, he would put applicants for the Nuclear Program through the wierdest indoctrination you could believe. I will not trouble you with all the weird things he forced them to do–it would give more bad ideas to fraternity rats, and we don’t need any more of that. I will merely focus on one case–I did not know the guy, but he was one of those spoiled and pampered pets of uncle sam from down on crabtown on the bay, aka an academy man.

He appeared before the Admiral (vice admiral–not nice admiral) in is office in the old Navy building in Washington DC. At the time, the admiral had another applicant locked up in the broom closet reciting something. The Admiral has him sit down, asked him if he has a girl friend, and whether they planned to get hitched after graduation. Yes to both questions and it was all arranged–a sword ceremony at the Naval Academy chapel where John Paul Jones is buried.

The Admiral told him it was a bad idea. The sub corp and marriage do not mix. You better make your decision, sonny. And hit had better be the right one if you want the dolphins wings. (I am embellishing only a bit) He gave the young ensign to be one week to decide.

One week later he returned to the admirals office. Naturally, Rickover was putting some other applicant though some other test that only de Sade could fully appreciate. He feined not remembering the conversation, which forced the young ensign to recite the challenge the admiral had given him, and his answer. The admiral acted disinterested, but finally said, okay what is it going to be?

Whereupon the young man told the admiral that he had decided that the navy was more important to him than his fiance.

Whereupon the Admiral told him, I don’t need you. What I need in the sub service is men of character, who do not buckle under pressure—like you just did.

Well that is the long way around the barn, but given Hillary’s challenges with Bill, I find it very unlikely that she told Huma to dump Weiner or else. I like Huma very much and I think she is one of Hillary’s best assets. Now Hillary might say something like don’t embarrass me with his antics, but divorce him? NFS in my opinion.

Top Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin has been given an ultimatum: dump serial-sexting hubby Anthony Weiner, or get out of Clintontown.

“Huma has a choice to make,” a close associate tells New York magazine. “Does she go with Anthony, or does she go with Hillary?”

Abedin’s decision over whether to leave the “Clinton bubble,” where she’s seen as Hillary’s most trusted aide, has emerged as “the biggest question among Hillary’s circle” as the former Secretary of State mulls a 2016 run for the White House, the magazine reports.

Honestly, I don’t know why anyone would have to tell Huma to drop Wiener. Not that a spouse should just automatically dump his/her partner after one mistake (although that first sexting thing would be a real turnoff).

However if after that partner issues a (in)sincere, heart-felt? apology and repents of his weird, disgusting behavior, he resumes the practice (or never really ceases), the odds are slim that he will ever totally abandon his sexually odd behavior – and if he does, he may well replace it with another equally odd sexual behavior. At that point, the spouse should probably start looking for a good divorce lawyer.

If that partner who resumed that sexually odd behavior decides to run for a high profile political office (which will in all likelihood, eventually lead to exposure) his judgement should be seriously questioned, and the spouse should probably run not walk to her divorce lawyers office. She may want think about having the court to order psychiatric treatment for the partner.

If the spouse remains with that partner after the odd sexual behavior becomes public, and he stubbornly and arrogantly remains in the political race, snapping at reporters and citizens when they ask about this behavior – she may need to consider psychiatric treatment for herself.

The youth crowd, lacking any real info on which to base their judgement of Barack just fall back on the standard “at least he’s not a Republican” view.

In other words – they don’t know a damn thing. They are as much about image and half-truths as is Barack.
——————-
Yea. I completely agree. In the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king. Some know nothing puts an Obama bumper sticker on his car, and his peers think he is an insider, so they defer to his judgment. And he in turn has been programed by the Obama political machine. It is the one in ten formula spelled out in the Dean Plan. And there is another parasite–Howard Scream.

To me this looks like political theater. This article is by Red State Insider. I interpret that to mean a senior Republican staffer–probably a chief of staff for one of the true conservative leaders in the House. This is not some Politico journalistic hump pimping for the dims, but someone of character who is in the trenches, and fighting for the American People. He has been right all along about Boehner and McConnell.
——————————————-

How John Boehner and Mitch McConnell are Funding Obamacare

By: RedState Insider (Diary) | September 22nd, 2013 at 08:48 PM

Don’t be fooled by this political theater going on in Washington, DC. The fix is in and both sides are trying to fund ObamaCare while saving face.

The whole of House Republican Leadership thinks you are stupid. They have passed a bill that they know will be changed by Harry Reid before it goes back to the House in a few days. The smoking gun will happen when Boehner allows a Senate passed government funding measure to come up in the House minus the provision defunding ObamaCare. You wait and see.

Also, know that Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell is in on this too. He is going to stand with Senators Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) to save his Senate seat, but he knows that he has the power to stop this scheme.

Here is how both Republican and Democrats in leadership are trying to fool you. The House passed a Continuing Resolution, a measure to fund the government for two and one half months, with two things attached. A measure to defund ObamaCare and another to reorder the debt payment priorities of the United States government to allow the federal government to operate if the debt limit forbids anymore federal borrowing. These amendments were grouped in a way making it very easy for the Senate to delete this provision. And that was by design.

After the House passed the resolution, they had a big fake rally to make believe they were happy that they were funding the government while defunding ObamaCare. Yet Republicans in the House think we are stupid. Representatives like Peter King (R-NY) and Tom Cole (R-Oklahoma) either went on TV or yelled at Tea Party minded constituents to tell them why the House could not pass a budget bill that defunds ObamaCare, yet they did it. These moderates only supported the House effort because they knew it was without teeth and an effort to make believe they are fighting ObamaCare.

The only reason why squishes in the House agreed to send a defund ObamaCare measure to the Senate is because they know the fix is in and the defunding of ObamaCare will never happen. Now I am not saying that these squishy members don’t want to repeal ObamaCare — they do — they are merely unwilling to put up any sort of a fight to repeal it.

The bottom line is that Speaker of the House John Boehner, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor and House Whip Kevin McCarthy all know that the only way they could convince the House to pass a CR that defunds ObamaCare is if this was merely a messaging bill that would be changed by the Senate.

We now have circumstantial evidence that the House Republican Leadership conspired with Senate Democratic Leadership to set up the theater to save ObamaCare while preserving House Republicans reputation for fighting ObamaCare. Why else would the media be openly talking about the complicated Senate procedure that is expected to be used to railroad this bill through the Senate.

The Senate is about to embark on a debate on the CR. Here is how it is going to work. The Senate Republican Leader will move to proceed to a CR that kills ObamaCare. Senate Republican Leadership will urge members to vote to proceed and start debate and they will say “this is what you wanted’ — a CR that defunds ObamaCare. Yet all Senate Democrats are planning to vote for it.

The fix is in.

Once the Senate commences consideration of the House passed CR, then Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will abuse his power as Majority Leader and block all amendments to the bill with the exception of his amendments. His amendment will be to strike the provision that defunds ObamaCare meaning that Reid will offer an Amendment to restore funding for ObamaCare.

Reid will be filling the amendment tree, a hyper technical parliamentary tactic that allows the leader to block all amendments to legislation. The Senate is known as a body with extended debate and unlimited amendments. Reid will both block all amendments then he will file a cloture petition to shut down debate immediately upon offering the amendment.

What will Republican Leaders to in the Senate to fight this abuse of power? Nothing.

After this happens, because of the complicated procedure, Reid will need 6 Republicans to vote to shut down debate on the bill to get a vote on the Reid amendment. Now some Republicans will try to fool Tea Party minded voters and they will argue that the vote to shut down debate is a vote to support a final vote on defunding ObamaCare.

They will be lying.

If 6 Republican Senators squish and vote for cloture on the bill, then a vote will happen on Reid’s motion to strike later in the process.

We all know it takes 60 votes to do anything in the Senate. Remember the Manchin-Toomey gun control amendment to the Reid gun control bill? The reason the bill failed is because liberals could not cobble together 60 votes to get Manchin-Toomey across the finish line. Every amendment and bill need 60 votes to pass, yet Reid has figured out a way to set up a vote that only needs 51 votes.

If Senators vote for cloture on this funding bill, they are voting with all the Democrats to fund ObamaCare.

The American people are not stupid and they are not going to believe that Republicans voting to shut off debate somehow want to defund Obamacare. If that were true why are all Democrats voting to shut off debate with a handful of Republicans?

Because this is a rhetorical trick to protect Republicans who will vote with Harry Reid.

Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) have been fighting to defund ObamaCare. They have a plan. Fight Reid’s motion to strike the provision to defund ObamaCare and force 60 Senators to shut down debate on that proposition. Republicans win that fight then Reid has a take it or leave it proposition with the House Continuing Resolution that defunds ObamaCare.

The problem is that Cruz and Lee are being sabotaged by his own leadership. The House and Senate Republican leadership are to fearful of being blamed for a government shut down to fight this issue. They are running the white flag of surrender up the flag pole before a shot has even been fired.

Squishy House Republicans and House Leadership want to embarrass Cruz and Lee when they fail to get the defunding of ObamaCare across the finish line. Boehner set our guys up for failure — that is a fact.

Reid has all but told the world exactly what he is going to do and Republicans are rolling over in the Senate already.

If Republicans don’t blink and block cloture on everything until Senate Majority Leader Reid promises that the rules will be followed and Reid will need 60 votes to shut down debate on his amendment to fully fund ObamaCare, our guys can win this.

If squishy Senate Republicans make arguments that they are voting to defund ObamaCare when they are voting with Democrats to help Reid defund ObamaCare, we will lose.

Tea Party minded voter are not stupid. The American people will not be fooled. Any Senate Republican who votes to shut off debate on this Continuing Resolution is helping Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to fund ObamaCare.

Any Republican who is helping Reid, even if they vote right, are guilty of political treason. They need to be repealed and replaced.

Barack’s best friend, as evidenced by his support for Obama’s war initiative, his pushing the Gang of 8 proposal (he was part of the original gang of 10–he came from the construction industry, so all he is interested in is cheap labor)and now his attempt to undermine Cruz.

He did an excellent job of capturing the essence of this anti American people RINO. My only question to the campaign manager is: what have you got against pond scum? It has a place in the ecological order of things, not so Corker.

You got a glimpse of this too in his racial attacks against the black Democrat candidate, Harold Ford. Thus in addition to all his other dubious virtues, it seems that Corker is a dyed in the wool racist.

Politico’s Burgess Everett became the latest mainstream media reporter to inaccurately smear Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) late Sunday, attempting to argue in his headline that Cruz is trying to “scramble” to “salvage” his Obamacare defunding strategy.

“Ted Cruz and his allies are fighting a battle they will almost certainly lose in the Senate this week,” Everett wrote for Politico in a story posted late Sunday. “The freshman Republican from Texas, along with Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and some vocal House conservatives, pushed House Republican leaders to pass a bill Friday that funds the government until Dec. 15 at a $986 billion annual funding level but denies money for Obamacare’s implementation. That defunding provision is a nonstarter with President Barack Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), who says it’s ‘dead’ in his chamber.”

But this is not an accurate representation of Cruz’ plan. This entire strategy is what Cruz and Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) articulated from the start. In interviews with Breitbart News from July, both Cruz and Lee laid out exactly this strategy.

In the next paragraph of Everett’s piece, he wrote: “After months of fiery rhetoric, Cruz and his allies are scrambling to salvage their strategy. For starters, Cruz wants Reid to make an exception to Senate rules that would make it easier for Republicans to block Obamacare funding.”

Everett said that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is expected to “begin Monday by setting up a procedural vote on the House bill that will require 60 votes to pass” and then Reid “plans to hold a simple majority vote on stripping the Obamacare defunding measure and send a clean continuing resolution back to the House, possibly just a day or two before a potential shutdown.”

“Cruz is asking Reid to subject the vote on removing the Obamacare provision to a 60-vote threshold instead of ‘abusing his power,’” Everett wrote. “That sort of agreement would require the consent of all 100 senators, which isn’t going to happen.”

For Everett to say that such a unanimous consent agreement from the Senate “isn’t going to happen” is a stretch at best. Cruz has threatened to lead a talking Senate floor filibuster until Senate Republicans unite to lead a procedural filibuster–which would require 41 votes. Breitbart News has reported before that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell could deliver that number. McConnell faces re-election and a primary challenge in Kentucky next year.

If Reid and all the Senate Democrats block the fair floor vote Cruz is fighting for–a 60-vote threshold on amendments post-cloture requiring bipartisan support, Reid and the Senate Democrats will in effect be choosing to shut down the government. Reid and current House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi were unable to accomplish this when they passed Obamacare on strictly partisan political lines. The power rests with Reid and the Democrats now: have a fair floor fight, or shut the government down. It is their choice, and it is McConnell’s choice on whether he will deliver the votes necessary to accomplish this.

Politico, an inside-the-beltway publication, is well aware that this is the case, and should know better than to publish what Cruz has deemed talking points from President Barack Obama’s White House.

Politico’s Everett cites former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s op-ed in Breitbart News this weekend, throwing her weight behind Cruz’s effort. But Politico did not quote the part of Palin’s op-ed that is relevant to this part of Cruz’s fight. “If the Senate doesn’t get behind Ted Cruz’s efforts to defund Obamacare, it won’t be because of any failure on Ted’s part. It’ll be because there weren’t enough principled leaders to stand with him, and that would be a tragic loss, not for Ted, but for America.”

Breitbart News explained Cruz’s path to victory this weekend:

First, when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid brings the House continuing resolution (CR) to the floor next week, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell needs to deliver 41 Republican votes to filibuster it until Senator Reid agrees not to try and restore funding for Obamacare. McConnell has the power to ensure that Reid cannot get an amendment onto the bill that strips the Obamacare defunding language with a simple majority vote. As Breitbart News laid out on Friday, McConnell has closed down one pathway that Reid could use:

If [Reid] introduces an amendment before the Senate votes on cloture for the House CR[, t]hat would require a 60-vote threshold, and McConnell’s spokesman Don Stewart told Breitbart News that if Reid attempted that tactic, all Senate Republicans would stand together to block it.

However, a major avenue is still open through which Reid can get the amendment onto the bill with a simple majority. If McConnell decides Obamacare is worth fighting in earnest on must-pass legislation (ie non-symbolic votes), then he will deliver the 41 necessary votes to filibuster until Reid is forced to agree to a clean up-or-down Senate floor vote on the Obamacare defunding CR the House just passed. There is something McConnell can do using his power that could accomplish this: Filibuster the House CR until there is a unanimous consent agreement that any amendments added to it after cloture is invoked would also each require a 60-vote threshold. The power rests now with McConnell. Delivering the 41 votes is essential to help Ted Cruz.

Politico’s Everett seems to have based his entire article on an interview he did with Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, who he does not even cite until the second page of his story. “The question is whether the Senate is under Cruz control,” Durbin said. “I hope they’re not. I’ve appealed to some of the more sensible Republicans in their caucus that they have to step up. I don’t hear it from McConnell, I don’t hear it from Cornyn. We’ll just have to hear it from some members of their caucus if we can avoid this national disaster.”

Reid, Pelosi and Durbins are tapeworms in the body politic, who feed on the host and eventually lead to its demise. That more people do not see this when it is right in front of their eyes is a reflection of the ignorance of the electorate.

Another Cruz opponent, Peter King (R-Ny) is another choir boy:
—————————————————-

Support for the IRA

In 2011, King said that his ties to the Irish Republican Army (IRA) had been “entirely distorted”, arguing that if the accusations were true then “I doubt the president of the United States would have offered me the position of ambassador to Ireland.”[25] King began actively supporting the Irish republican movement in the late 1970s. He frequently traveled to Northern Ireland to meet with senior members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA), many of whom he counted as friends.[13][26]

King compared the leader of Sinn Féin, the political wing of the PIRA, Gerry Adams to George Washington, and asserted that the “British government is a murder machine”.[27] However, he did not meet Adams until 1984.[28]

King became involved[when?] with NORAID, an organization that the British, Irish and U.S. governments had accused of financing IRA activities and providing them with weapons.[13][29][30][31] Regarding the 30 years of violence during which the IRA killed over 1,700 people, including Lord Mountbatten, Lord Kaberry, Sir Anthony Berry MP and over 600 civilians, King said, “If civilians are killed in an attack on a military installation, it is certainly regrettable, but I will not morally blame the IRA for it.”[32] A U.S. citizen (Kenneth Salvesen) had been killed and another, Mark McDonald, wounded in the December 1983 PIRA Harrods bombing, which resulted in a total of six deaths and ninety injuries.

He also called the PIRA “the legitimate voice of occupied Ireland”[33] although the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), which opposed all violence and spoke for most of Northern Ireland’s Catholics at that time, remained the majority nationalist party in Northern Ireland until 2003. Speaking at a pro-PIRA rally in 1982 in Nassau County, New York, King pledged support to “those brave men and women who this very moment are carrying forth the struggle against British imperialism in the streets of Belfast and Derry.”[13][34] In 1985, the Irish government boycotted New York’s annual St. Patrick’s Day celebrations in protest at King serving as Grand Marshal of the event; the Irish government condemned him as an “avowed” supporter of IRA terrorism.[35] At the parade he again offered words of support for the IRA.[36]

A judge in Northern Ireland ejected King from the courtroom,[when?] describing King as “an obvious collaborator with the IRA”.[13] Some organizations reported that King was banned from appearing on British TV for his pro-IRA views.[citation needed]

So there it is, the tension within the American presidency. As the leader of a political party, he knows he will never win reelection unanimously, so he must rally one subset of the population against another subset. In days of yore, presidents wielded the patronage power for this purpose; today, rhetoric is one substitute. At the same time, as the representative of all the people, the president is charged with faithfully executing the laws and empowered to defend the national interest in foreign affairs. Different presidents have handled the tension in different ways, and Obama is not the first to choose the more partisan path. Perhaps what makes him extraordinary is the lengths he went to during his campaigns of 2007 and 2008 to promise that he would not be a partisan brawler.

In the final analysis, it is hard to draw a straight line from rhetorical strategy to political or policy success. Yet dangers do seem to lie at the extremes. George H.W. Bush was probably too kind to the Democrats during his tenure and paid a price for it, with a primary challenge from Pat Buchanan and a dispirited Republican electorate. Similarly, Eisenhower never made a full-throated case for Republican control of government and, despite his massive popularity, faced Democratic majorities in Congress after 1955 that stopped or adulterated most of his legislative initiatives. On the other hand, while Bill Clinton was as tough a partisan brawler as one will ever find, he nevertheless cut a series of deals with the 104th Congress, the most important of which was welfare reform. Clinton moved more toward the Republicans than vice versa, even as he was representing himself as the sole defender against GOP atavism!

Clinton’s policy successes notwithstanding, the danger of the bare-knuckle approach is that it can erode trust. Bipartisan accomplishments often hinge on the promise that a breakthrough will be a win-win. But how can a legislator believe that a highly partisan president will spread the credit around? And even under Clinton, many of the deals congressional Republicans cut with the president came only after they recognized that they were losing the public relations battle. In other words, Clinton’s victories came in large part because he had outboxed his opponents.

The current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue has clearly failed to do that. While Barack Obama won reelection last year, he did so with a diminished share of the votes, and Republicans were returned to Congress in roughly the same numbers as before. This year, Republicans’ battles with the White House have done at least as much damage to Obama as to Republicans. So, without fear of the president, what incentive do his opponents have to deal with him? Certainly, there is no trust, no expectation that both sides would walk away satisfied from any agreement.

So it goes in the age of Obama. Far from being a post-partisan presidency, this has been a hyperpartisan one, ranking up there with the most polarizing in the postwar era

Now that I think about it, the above article is very important. Whenever you run into some ignorant person who deplores the lack of bi partisanship and blames the (gutless) republicans for what they see as this sad state of affairs, thereby adopting unwittingly the Obama/big media line, show them this article, in the vain hope that they may, even for one brief shining moment, know the truth. A fish rots from the head down, and that is certainly the case with the Liar In Chief Obama.

Here’s indication that nothing is private anymore.
Popular Bathroom Wipes Blamed for Sewer Clogs. September 23, 2013 8:31 AM
Snip Wastewater authorities say wipes may go down the toilet, but even many labeled flushable aren’t breaking down as they course through the sewer system. That’s costing some municipalities millions of dollars to dispatch crews to unclog pipes and pumps and to replace and upgrade machinery.
The problem got so bad in this western New York community this summer that sewer officials set up traps — basket strainers in sections of pipe leading to an oft-clogged pump — to figure out which households the wipes were coming from. They mailed letters and then pleaded in person for residents to stop flushing them. sniphttp://washington.cbslocal.com/2013/09/23/popular-bathroom-wipes-blamed-for-sewer-clogs/

It made a good headline – booker releases 15 years of his taxes
– but it all smacks exactly of POTUS.
SNIP The mayor’s tax returns remain locked up, though they were allowed a conjugal visit with the press: Nine reporters, all hand-picked by the Booker campaign, were permitted three hours with the documents in a hotel ballroom in Newark — no photographs, no copies, no removing documents from the room, resulting in what one of the reporters present described as a mad scramble to record information as the clock ticked to zero. SNIP http://www.nationalreview.com/article/359202/cory-bookers-problematic-tax-returns-editors

No surprise here, but Nancy Pelosi hopped on the Hillary bandwagon on Sunday, telling CNN’s Candy Crowley in no uncertain terms, “When she becomes president, she will be one of the best-equipped, best-prepared people to enter the White House in a very long time.” Having a female ensconced at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, she added, “would be magnificent for America.”

On the question of experience, the House minority leader was unequivocal, saying that the former first lady would be more prepared than the current president as well as his two predecessors. “With all due respect to our president, and I think he is magnificent and wonderful and a blessing to us, [Clinton would] certainly [be] more prepared than President Obama, certainly more prepared than President Bush, certainly more prepared than President Clinton,” she said. George H. W. Bush, having served as vice president under Ronald Reagan, was very prepared to assume the presidency, in Pelosi’s estimation.

…………………..

Tell us something we dont know you daft cow…..we told you that in 2008 but oh no you had to get drunk and go down the kool aid route.

In Hillary Clinton’s first interview since leaving the State Department, she is finally coming clean: Yes, she is “wrestling” with the idea of running for president.

It’s taken awhile for her to get there.

In 2011, the question from NBC got an emphatic, “No.” Then in 2012, a slight tweak in the verbiage, when she told ABC, “I really don’t believe that that’s something I will do again.” And finally, this year in an interview with CNN, Clinton said, “I am not thinking about anything like that right now.”

But now, in an interview with New York Magazine, Clinton said, “I will just continue to weigh what the factors are that would influence me making a decision one way or the other.”

————–
I refuse to believe that, and not because Pelosi is a lying traitor, and disgrace to public office. That is a matter of public record, and we have seen it all before. What I have not seen however is similar evidence that she is a cannibal, and if she were really eating crow then she would have to be that as well.

Pelosi: Hillary is more prepared than Obama was
——————–
We know what counts with the electorate any more, and it sure as hell is not whether or not the candidate has experience and is prepared. I want to stay away from that experience stuff this time because it will lead us right back into the Benghazi mess. Experience and preparation were irrelevant in 2008, and in 2016 they will be radio active. A much better approach is to talk about her ability to work with foreign leaders, celebrity status, work on behalf of women, that soft stuff. The public will buy that, but not this experience crap. I hope they learn the lessons of 2008. I know she is not playing the inevitability drum this time, and is acting like she is pondering–or the new word that these mindless media maggots love mulling it all over. That is smart. The other thing they had better start doing is getting all the oppo research they can on fat ass Christie. That guy has got a rutheless thing in him a mile wide, and he will be cold and heartless in slashing benefits. In sum, he has a taste for blood.

Senators Ted Cruz and Mike Lee have shown us what it means to shake up the vacuous leadership in the party. They will not allow this $7,500 tax on every family to go through. It’s now time for us to send them reinforcements. Otherwise, we will suffer through the rest of Obama’s second term with John McCain as the opposition leader.

——————————————

Sitting Out the Battle; Fighting a Fake Fight

By: Daniel Horowitz (Diary) | September 23rd, 2013 at 03:17 PM | 38

Over the past few decades, Republicans have approached primary voters during every election season with intrepid conviction and solemn promises to roll back the harmful big government policies of the left. After they win the election they do nothing consequential to actually change the rules of the game.

Most Republicans are used to opposing something so long as the opposition is only ceremonial. They never pursue the only strategy to actually block a bad bill or countermand an unpopular policy. They just like to use the issue as a political football during elections as an ends to itself.

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell has perfected this game over the years. He fails to take a public position or whip against a terrible idea, often hoping yes and voting no. Then he will grandstand against the policy in campaign speeches while ignoring the only means of actually delivering on that promise. This has created a vacuum of leadership in the Senate – a void which has become even more potent over the past few months.

It has become clear to any casual observer of the Senate that Senator John McCain is the defacto party leader for Republicans, serving as a conduit to deliver votes to Sen. Chuck Schumer. We’ve seen this dynamic play out on amnesty, Obama’s radical nominees, defunding Obamacare, and Syria. It is always Senators McCain and Lindsey Graham who are openly voicing their opinion on behalf of Republicans, and sometimes even whipping up votes for the other side.

When the Senate was voting to confirm Todd Jones (the man behind Fast and Furious) as Director of the ATF, John McCain was on the Senate floor whipping up votes for the Democrats, eventually convincing Senator Lisa Murkowski to switch her vote.

During the entire voting process on President Obama’s nominees and other issues this year, everyone has been asking the obvious question. Where is Mitch? Where is the supposed GOP Leader? Why is he not whipping the vote against Schumer and Reid? Why is he not even voicing his own opinion on the issue? Is it because he cannot control John McCain but really opposes him or is it because he actually agrees with him but is too scared to publicly stand by his private views, opting instead to allow Senators McCain, Graham, and Bob Corker to do the dirty work?

We are seeing the same dynamic play out with the defund battle. Senator Ted Cruz came to Washington to actually change the game. He plans to follow through with his campaign promises. What a novel idea. He plans to take an unpopular law and actually oppose it when it really counts. Not surprisingly, John McCain, Bob Corker and the backbencher progressives are hyperventilating. But once again, we hear only crickets from the minority leader, except for a few parsed statements indicating that he opposes the defund effort in general, parts of Obamacare are “okay,” and that his standalone delay bill – which will never force the issue – Is the true way to defund Obamacare.

So is McConnell really fighting behind the scenes to neutralize John McCain or is he allowing him to rule the roost?

Last week, John McCain told reporters he was supporting Mitch McConnell against Matt Bevin in Kentucky. Obviously, McCain doesn’t feel threatened by him. He is most likely empowered by McConnell.

As conservatives begin working on the 2014 primaries, we must all remember the difference between those Republicans who actually fight while we have men on the field and those who talk tough when the ball is dead. Senators Ted Cruz and Mike Lee have shown us what it means to shake up the vacuous leadership in the party. They will not allow this $7,500 tax on every family to go through. It’s now time for us to send them reinforcements. Otherwise, we will suffer through the rest of Obama’s second term with John McCain as the opposition leader.

Barack Obama is not Bill Clinton. Clinton was a superior politician whose instincts were less ideological than Obama’s. Clinton was able to connect with a majority of the American people directly; Obama has remained aloof and distant during his entire term in office. Clinton was seeking re-election and was thus more malleable; Obama is a far more rigid ideologue who is not facing re-election. Obama is more liable to mistake his re-election for a freer hand to combat Republicans now than Clinton was, and overreach. He made that mistake over gun control, and failed spectacularly. Obama has no one around him in the White House or among his congressional allies to rein in his leftist instincts.

Obama is already badly weakened. The gun control defeat and the more recent debacle over Syria have left him unable even to pass a resolution allowing the use of force against a rogue state dictator. In the Obamacare fight, he would be fighting to preserve an unpopular law that is rightly being blamed for destroying jobs and costing millions of Americans their health care coverage. Obama would be fighting to preserve a law that did not enjoy majority support when it was passed and is just as unpopular now. Obama is threatening to shut down the government just to keep that unpopular law on the books. Republicans can win the communications war over Obamacare.
———————————————-
Obamacare Shutdown Showdown: 2013 Is Not 1995, and Cruz Can Win

by Bryan Preston

September 23, 2013 – 5:22 am

Republicans who fear the effects of a possible government shutdown over Obamacare next month seem, chiefly, to fear that Republicans will be blamed. This blame would translate into losses in next year’s mid-term elections, and if those losses are large enough, they could cost the GOP not only a shot at re-taking the Senate, but could cost control of the House as well. Democrat control of Congress would give Barack Obama nearly unchallenged power for his final two years in office.

Some Republicans fear the consequences of a shutdown so much that they’re smearing Sen. Ted Cruz, the Texan who is leading the defund effort, sniping at him in the media and even sending opposition research on him to Fox News Channel’s Chris Wallace.

Their fears are understandable, but they’re overblown.

The 1995 government shutdown, which pitted then House Speaker Newt Gingrich against President Bill Clinton, is widely seen today as a disaster for the Republican Party. It wasn’t. That shutdown put a major dent in President Clinton’s prestige and popularity, while at the same time most Americans actually experienced no ill effects from it. The sky did not fall.

Gingrich and the GOP probably would have won the shutdown outright if he had not come off as a sore winner a few months later, when he appeared to blame it all on a personal snub by Clinton to him. Sen. Cruz and today’s other GOP leaders can be expected not to make such a bonehead, self-centered mistake. They are not Newt Gingrich.

Barack Obama is not Bill Clinton. Clinton was a superior politician whose instincts were less ideological than Obama’s. Clinton was able to connect with a majority of the American people directly; Obama has remained aloof and distant during his entire term in office. Clinton was seeking re-election and was thus more malleable; Obama is a far more rigid ideologue who is not facing re-election. Obama is more liable to mistake his re-election for a freer hand to combat Republicans now than Clinton was, and overreach. He made that mistake over gun control, and failed spectacularly. Obama has no one around him in the White House or among his congressional allies to rein in his leftist instincts.

Obama is already badly weakened. The gun control defeat and the more recent debacle over Syria have left him unable even to pass a resolution allowing the use of force against a rogue state dictator. In the Obamacare fight, he would be fighting to preserve an unpopular law that is rightly being blamed for destroying jobs and costing millions of Americans their health care coverage. Obama would be fighting to preserve a law that did not enjoy majority support when it was passed and is just as unpopular now. Obama is threatening to shut down the government just to keep that unpopular law on the books. Republicans can win the communications war over Obamacare.

Another reason that a 2013 shutdown may not play out like 1995 is the fact that the Chicken Little caucus has already been discredited. President Obama and the Democrats predicted Armageddon if the sequestration budget cuts, which Obama’s White House proposed in the first place, were enacted. Those cuts kicked in months ago. Has Armageddon happened? No. Most Americans haven’t even noticed any adverse effects at all. The predictions that sequestration would do massive damage have been proven to be hysterical and wrong. Current predictions that a government shutdown would do massive damage are similarly hollow. The economy is already weak, weaker than it was in 1995, but that’s largely because of Obamacare now. Killing that law will help the recovery. Most Americans won’t even notice a government shutdown, unless Obama and the Democrats somehow manipulate events to make the shutdown more painful. But doing that risks exposure for them.

Republicans who fear another shutdown should go back and study what really happened after the 1995 shutdown. The following year was a presidential election year. Bill Clinton was re-elected, but mainly because he ran against a weak GOP opponent who had opposed the 1995 shutdown, and because the shutdown had taught him that he had to move to the right in order to win. He signed the GOP-crafted welfare reform law in 1996. He and Gingrich would go on to craft the nation’s first balanced budget in a generation. And the GOP did not suffer major damage in Congress. They lost a few seats in the House, but actually gained seats in the Senate. Obama will not move to the center no matter what.

Barack Obama isn’t even on the ballot in 2014, but if his antics produce a government shutdown, he will be. Vulnerable Democrats in places like Arizona, Florida and elsewhere will not be embracing him or Obamacare. They will be running away from him and his destructive law.

No surprise here, but Nancy Pelosi hopped on the Hillary bandwagon on Sunday, telling CNN’s Candy Crowley in no uncertain terms, “When she becomes president, she will be one of the best-equipped, best-prepared people to enter the White House in a very long time.” Having a female ensconced at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, she added, “would be magnificent for America.”

On the question of experience, the House minority leader was unequivocal, saying that the former first lady would be more prepared than the current president as well as his two predecessors. “With all due respect to our president, and I think he is magnificent and wonderful and a blessing to us, [Clinton would] certainly [be] more prepared than President Obama, certainly more prepared than President Bush, certainly more prepared than President Clinton,” she said. George H. W. Bush, having served as vice president under Ronald Reagan, was very prepared to assume the presidency, in Pelosi’s estimation.

_____________

OK, what’s really going on with Nancy? She would not have fought any harder against Pat Robertson, had he been running for the Dem nomination, than she did Hillary in 2008. Reportedly she bribed and threatened super delegates with the money from that bottomless PAC of hers, funded so the story goes by Soros. When the Hillary super delegates wouldn’t take the payoff, then came the intimidation tactics – threatening support for opponents in next Dem Primary, and if there was no opponent, Nancy and Barack would find one and run him/her. Even Robert Byrd caved, and He had been a long time Hillary ally. Hillary won WV by a huge landslide, and yet, after Nancy finished with him, he threw his support behind Barack.

I get that she wanted a prog, and that the extreme left wing of the Dem Party was really out to get the Clintons in 2008. Nancy quickly aligned herself with Dean, Kerry, Reid, Daschle, and as Uppity used to call him, the Chauffeur of Chappaquiddick, Teddy K. She jumped on O’s bandwagon and threw Hillary, and women under the bus.

So now, is this just BS? Does she see Hillary as the party’s best hope, and her best chance to be Speaker of the House again? Does she think Hillary has moved to the left, and won’t compromise with the Pubs? If so, her Senate record does not support that theory. Is she just keeping her face in the news? Knowing how high Hill’s approval rating is, is she just trying to increase her own approval rating?

Whatever she says it’s not to be trusted. Any Dem woman in public office, especially one who claims to want to see a woman in the WH, would have run to Hillary’s defense in 2008, when the media persisted in their sexist attacks. Such a woman would have advised her young (half) black candidate to stop talking $hit about the female, and stick to the issues. But Nancy did not do so. She did not stand against the misogyny. She could have easily done so – while still affirming her support for Barack. She didn’t do the decent thing. There’s a reason for that.

It’s damn amazing isn’t it?! I saw a headline this morning about Palin saying Hillary not being fit (or something to that effect) to be president. I didn’t read the article.

I’ll never regret standing up for Sarah when she was being subjected to unbelievable sexism in 2008 – even though I resented her comments about Hillary “whining” about the sexist treatment she received – which she NEVER did. She’s made other comments along the way that I didn’t care for, but chalked up to partisanship. But, if she thinks she can hold a tiny candle to Hillary, she’s sadly, sorely mistaken, and the very notion raises questions about her judgement.

Both the Dems and the Repubs are gunning for Cruz, as has been said here. On a FOX radio broad cast tonight, I heard the Liberal commentator state that Chris Wallace had said that after it was announced that Cruz would be his guest on Sun., he (Wallace) received a lot of unsolicited calls and emails from top Republicans – providing research on Cruz, and urging Wallace to really “hammer” him.

President Obama has endorsed Bill DeBlasio.
WPIX crawl this AM.
First Booker for Senate. Now Robin Hood for NYC mayor. The Endorser-In-Chief.
———————–
To Sarah Palin: I still don’t get what was to be criticized about HRC’s what difference remark. The main event is the horribly inadequate response to the attack. But with Sarah joining in, it’s safe to say ALL GOP is running with “it”.
————————
To Harry and would-be investigative reporters: Latest TEA party smear from height of Senate Floor could be construed as White House signal its OK for IRS to target.
——————–
In the next day or two, 535 congress critters will receive my post card with ostensibly naive argument for voter representation, interspersed with 5 links. 3 refer to inappropriate timing of endorsements, one to Spring 2012 tea party bashing [Matt Cartwright]; the final to Casey’s TeaPartyTomSmith.com website which incredibly was still available one week ago. [I’ve not checked since, but have screen shots of it for when it finally goes.] And, that Lois Lerner article above, right leaning WashTimes even, still parrots nothing connects IRS to higher ups.

Each post card has a personal note indicating there are two separate messages in the small missive. 400+ of them were tossed into local mailbox yesterday. Rest? surely today. Then maybe I’ll find other addresses. News organizations. There is nothing sophisticated here. The technique is that of a dripping faucet. Maybe someday it will catch. Meantime I’ve satisfied this insatiable need to do something.

Each post card has a personal note indicating there are two separate messages in the small missive. 400+ of them were tossed into local mailbox yesterday. Rest? surely today. Then maybe I’ll find other addresses. News organizations. There is nothing sophisticated here. The technique is that of a dripping faucet. Maybe someday it will catch. Meantime I’ve satisfied this insatiable need to do something.

_________________

Hold’em, I admire your diligent, ongoing, steadfast efforts. Anxiety creates a need to expend energy – to act. Lord knows there’s plenty to be anxious about. Most of the time effort may seem futile, in view of the massive, well funded powers that are in place – from government to media – but hopefully, with the small (and in your case – large) efforts of many, some success will be achievable.

Even if there’s little hope – as we learned was the case in 2008, after those in power rigged the game – I’d rather go down fighting and with my boots on, than sitting in a rocking chair, wringing my hands. It’s clear that you would, as well.

Have you noticed a supermarket rag called the “Globe”?
Barry, Hillary & Mooch on cover. Issue: 30 September.
Here are the first several paragraphs [I’d heard of it and could not resist purchasing.]
“Barack Obama was seething with rage after he pleaded with Hillary Clinton for help during the explosive Syrian crisis in a desperate late-night phone call – and she refused, reveals a political insider.
The former Secretary of State, who had lost her bid for the 2008 presidential nomination to Obama, reportedly told the worried President, ‘You’re on you own on this one.’
Then the 65-year-old former First Lady coldly added, ‘You’re a disgrace to America!’
Obama was stunned and furious, says the insider.
He was already reeling from his popularity hitting an all-time low after being outsmarted by the Russians, says the insider….”

Senators Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and John Cornyn (R-TX) — the top two Republican leaders in the U.S. Senate — announced yesterday that they will support “cloture” on the government funding bill, giving Harry Reid and the Democrats a procedural green light to fund Obamacare with only 50 votes.

Breitbart News is reporting that McConnell and Cornyn are using their leadership positions to pressure other Republicans to oppose Senators Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Mike Lee (R-UT) in their effort to defund Obamacare.

According to a senior staffer quoted in the news report, “Nobody is fighting harder to make sure Obamacare is funded than Mitch McConnell and John Cornyn.”

This is the ultimate betrayal.

TAKE ACTION: Tell Senate Republicans to Stand With Ted Cruz and Mike Lee, Not Mitch McConnell and John Cornyn

We knew Mitch McConnell and John Cornyn weren’t with us when they voted to fund Obamacare earlier this year. But then, under pressure from grassroots, they said they supported the effort to defund it. They even ran political ads in their home states to make voters think they were on their side.

But now, faced with the prospect of having to fight for the things they claim to believe, these Senate leaders have surrendered.

Mitch McConnell and John Cornyn have surrendered to Barack Obama, Harry Reid, and the Democrats. More importantly, they have surrendered to Obamacare — the biggest job killer in America.

MELT THE PHONES

We can’t let these turncoats force millions of Americans into this liberal train wreck.

Obamacare is unaffordable, unworkable, and it’s unfair.

Please contact the other Republican senators — even if they aren’t from your state — and urge them to OPPOSE cloture so the Democrats can’t fund Obamacare.

You can find the list of senators at DontFundObamacare.com along with their contact information and where they currently stand on this issue.

It’s very important for you to call senators today and urge them to stand with Ted Cruz and Mike Lee in the fight to stop funding Obamacare.

Time is running out. Obamacare begins in just one week. We must act now.

This country belongs to us, not the politicians in Washington. Let’s make sure they hear us loud and clear.

Have you noticed a supermarket rag called the “Globe”?
Barry, Hillary & Mooch on cover. Issue: 30 September.
Here are the first several paragraphs [I’d heard of it and could not resist purchasing.]
“Barack Obama was seething with rage after he pleaded with Hillary Clinton for help during the explosive Syrian crisis in a desperate late-night phone call – and she refused, reveals a political insider.
The former Secretary of State, who had lost her bid for the 2008 presidential nomination to Obama, reportedly told the worried President, ‘You’re on you own on this one.’
Then the 65-year-old former First Lady coldly added, ‘You’re a disgrace to America!’
Obama was stunned and furious, says the insider.
He was already reeling from his popularity hitting an all-time low after being outsmarted by the Russians, says the insider….”

possibly credible, no? 🙂
___________

I wouldn’t trust the credibility of the source, but if it’s true and she said it, then

However, I think it is impossible to expect the RINO to live up to the Constitution or stop stabbing conservatives in the back from behind the curtain.

Rather than delivering an ultimatum to them, I would much prefer to deliver a fait acompli. That is the power move. An ultimatum invites them to call your bluff, and paint you into a corner. A fait acompli forces them to tax their little brains on how to get you back. I am not sure I want back, but I do want to negotiate from a position of weakness.

So here is what the bargaining position of conservatives and independents who are sick of the RINO duplicity, and no longer wish to support it in any way shape or form would look like.

Dear McConnell, McCain, Cronyn, Corbett, et. al.

We know you hate conservatives. You have shown us that by your words and your actions.

We know you hate the tea party. You have shown us that by your words and actions as well.

And finally, we know you hate the American People, so much so that you are willing to fund a piece of legislation which will strip away any pretense of the limited government you pretend to believe in, which will bankrupt many families.

When the soldiers of the Continental Army were marching off to make war on the British, with frost bitten fingers and bleeding feet, their battle cry was Liberty or Death.

Your battle cry on the other hand is give me money and watch me cave, as you sit in the dining room of the Willard Hotel with your real constituents, K-Street lobbyist–you next employer perhaps?

Well, we the American People feel guilty that we have been such a burden on you, having to lie to us on what your real intentions are. And we know you wish we were not here, except perhaps for our votes.

Therefore, to clear our conscience we have decided to lighten your load by . . . um . . . 30 million votes. We are leaving the party. And we will not turn out to vote.

Balls of fire! you say. That would be ceding the playing field to the Bolsheviks!

This man is going to be dreadful for NYC. I wonder how long it will take him to turn it into Detroit.
======

ACORN sowed seeds for de Blasio

The leftist group ACORN has been plotting for more than a decade to install Bill de Blasio at City Hall, a Democratic Party source has told The Post.

“Without exaggeration, ACORN’s long-range plan since 2001 was to elect de Blasio mayor,” said the Democratic insider. “De Blasio was a big ACORN project.”

The Democratic mayoral candidate has marched in lock step with ACORN, now renamed New York Communities for Change, even before he took public office in 2001.

The group backed de Blasio that year over Legal Aid Services director Steven Banks in a six-way Brooklyn City Council race, despite Banks’ reputation at the time as a one of the city’s leading champions of the poor and liberal causes.

Eight years later, ACORN was back at de Blasio’s side and, with the union-financed Working Families Party, helped him become public advocate, a perch he used to become the Democratic nominee for mayor.

A key cog in the de Blasio political machine is Bertha Lewis, the former ACORN head who also co-founded the Working Families Party.

On primary election night earlier this month, when she stood on stage t next to de Blasio, Lewis made it clear ACORN’s work had paid off.

“We’re baaaack. The right wing will have to deal with it,” she chuckled.

The Obamacare that consumers will finally be able to sign up for next week is a long way from the health plan President Barack Obama first pitched to the nation.

Millions of low-income Americans won’t receive coverage. Many workers at small businesses won’t get a choice of insurance plans right away. Large employers won’t need to provide insurance for another year. Far more states than expected won’t run their own insurance marketplaces. And a growing number of workers won’t get to keep their employer-provided coverage.

“In an article recently published in The Guardian, Nancy Pelosi is quoted as saying that “Hillary Clinton should run for president. I am praying Hillary Clinton runs for president”.

Maybe Pelosi is suffering from short term memory loss but Hillary Clinton did run for the Democratic nomination for president back in 2008 and that wasn’t exactly Pelosi’s position at the time. In fact the opposite was true and there are few who did more to undermine Hillary Clinton’s candidacy for the nomination in 2008 than Nancy Pelosi.

When Hillary Clinton used a campaign slogan emphasizing her experience over Obama, ( which was a mistake –she should have emphasized accomplishment not experience. Obama had none in 11 years of elected office and Clinton had many) Pelosi publicly and repeatedly countered with ” Barrack Obama has the judgement and experience to be president from day one.”

Pelosi was also instrumental along with DNC hierarchy of voter suppression in, for intents and purposes, cheating Clinton out of the votes and delegates she earned in two huge landslide primary victories over Obama in Michigan and Florida and in the process disenfranchising 1,600,000 Democratic voters on the grounds that the heads of both state parties moved their primary dates without approval from the DNC. This was all done of course to benefit Obama since not only did he lose in two landslides ( and polls before the elections showed he would) there was a strong faction inside the party hierarchy (and the press as well for that matter) that had taken up the cause of Obama, a Democrat, becoming the first black president and that overshadowed everything. Even elections. ( There is little doubt that had Colin Powell decided to run in 2000, and there was talk he considered it, he would have won).

But on Saturday Pelosi told a crowd in Little Rock where she was attending a ceremony renaming an airport the Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport that, regarding a Hillary Clinton presidency, ” she’d be the best qualified person that we’ve seen. Think of the message that sends to the women of the world. The most powerful figure in the world is a woman and she also happens to be the most qualified for the job”.

Not exactly what Pelosi was saying in 2008 when Clinton was the most qualified person for the job then. On the contrary, Pelosi did everything in her power to undermine and defeat Clinton’s candidacy for the nomination. Including indulging in dubious and underhanded tactics.

When the 2008 primaries ended, Obama had a 65 delegate lead and Clinton had won the popular vote. Neither had the two-thirds majority needed to win the nomination so, based on Democratic party rules and procedures, the nomination would be decided at the convention.

With the possibility of the nomination being decided by the vote of super delegates, Pelosi publicly stated in June, two months before the convention, that super delegates “were obligated to vote for the candidate who won the most delegates during the primaries”.

Pelosi either knowingly lied or was shamefully ignorant of Democratic party rules and procedures since precisely the opposite was true as stated by the Democratic party rules governing super delegate votes in which is they are instructed to vote only their conscience as to who they think is the most qualified.

Pelosi’s assertion was so preposterous that if true, there would be no need for super delegates to being with — Democrats would just give the nomination to whomever won the most delegates during the primaries and forget the two-thirds majority. But Pelosi was trying to send a message to the super delegates that it was expected of them to vote for Obama at the convention.

Pelosi then began horsewhipping super delegates to come out and state their intentions to vote for Obama in June even though the convention was two months away and no matter what they said in June it wouldn’t have been binding ( in fact, in June 400 super delegates, at Pelosi’s urging came out saying they would vote for Obama. But a Politico poll in August, two days before the convention roll call vote indicated that more than 200 of them were going to abandon Obama sending the DNC into a tizzy and forcing them into another plan to avoid a super delegate vote). Pelosi , two months before the convention that was supposed to be an open and honest convention to select a nominee wanted to create a foregone conclusion that Obama would be that nominee. And to a great extent she succeeded.

There was also an attempt by some in the DNC that Pelosi knew about and supported, to try and convince Clinton to withdraw her name from the ballot at the convention so Obama could have the floor all to himself. This was supposedly to avoid a floor fight and to give the illusion of party unity since the primaries had been the most divisive in the history of the Democratic party. But Clinton, at the urging of her delegates refused.

So when Pelosi talks now about how qualified Clinton is to be president and calls her ” the best qualified person there is” it’s a little late , especially given how different the last 5 years would have been with a Clinton presidency.

So Pelosi’s comments now are a bit gratuitous and perhaps even self serving since according to a recent poll 65% of Democrats favor Clinton for the Democratic nomination in 2016 compared to 13% for Biden.

And this isn’t the first time Pelosi has reversed herself on issues of importance to Democrats and the country in order to cater to Obama. During the healthcare debate Pelosi said repeatedly that the public option was ” the centerpiece of healthcare reform”. But when Obama sold out the public option to the health insurance lobby and dropped it, she supported that even though House Democrats had already passed a health care reform bill with a public option and the majority of the American people wanted it. She even had to put down a revolt among Democrats when more than 100 said they’d refuse to vote for any healthcare bill that didn’t contain a public option. But Pelosi convinced them to do otherwise. The result was a disaster for Democrats as they were wiped out in the House in the 2010 elections only two years after getting the biggest majority of any party in 60 years. And there could be another disaster on the horizon with Obamacare but more on that another time.

More recently Pelosi was practically booed off the stage at a political event in San Francisco when she attacked Ed Snowden as a traitor to defended Obama and the NSA mass data collection on American citizens.

And when the House voted on defunding the NSA domestic spy program, Pelosi succeeded in seeing the vote fail by whipping up 80 Democrats to vote against it (the rest voted to defund the NSA data collection along with many Republicans.

The bill to defund failed by only 7 votes thanks to Pelosi. But after the vote and with both public opinion rising against it and statements by public figures from Obama to James Clapper conceding there needed to be a debate and probably changes to the program because of Snowden’s revelations, Pelosi’s duplicty rose again and she wrote a letter to Obama which she publicly released, expressing her ” deep concerns” about the NSA spying on Americans and saying changes needed to be made.

Clinton may welcome Pelosi’s belated endorsement. But if Pelosi wanted to be really honest about it, what she’d be saying is “better late then never”. And then be quiet.”

Some of the super delegates, as I recall, claimed to be “uncommitted” until very late in the game. Dona Brazille (I know – AYFKM, Brazillenut?) claimed to be undecided about whom she would support- Barack or Hillary – right up to convention. Of course, she was a commentator for CNN, and probably thought it best not to declare for appearance sake. But, she used that platform – as a so-called commentator – to campaign for Barack and to slam Hillary.

As the saying goes, “There’s a special place in Hell for women who won’t help other women.” If that’s true, there are a couple of red hot coals down there engraved with the initials N.P. and D.B.

BTW I just picked up package from TPPatriots – JennyBeth – they’re going for a an expensive project The Washington Project. Everything about it turns me off. Goal is to become big enough to compete with OFA and unions. Even expense of package introducing this thing is off the top to me. I’m still TP, but not supporting Jenny Beth any more. Cancelling the recurring donation. Back to Ted.

It would have been a checkmate had Rouhani accepted a meeting at the UN with Putin. I am hoping that the world leaders from country’s allied to Russia begin their speeches with a word of thanks to Russia for averting a potential world war. Sorry. Anything that make bumbles look like the boob he is makes me happy.

In a perfect world, there would be a perfect answer for every legitimate question, and society could move forward rather than sideways. But alas, it is it is an imperfect world and there are legitimate question that have no answer.

For example: why the average person in Tennessee would ever vote for you?

Just look at the position you have staked out the controversial issues of our time:

• Immigration (Gang of Ten member—I want to help Shumer)

• Obamacare (nothing we can do—I want to destroy Cruz and Lee)

• Syria war authorization ( bomb then—I want to help Obama)

To the American People, you are Wrong Way Corrigan. To the other party, are the weak spot in the line of defense. And to contributors, you are an honest politician—one who stays bought.

If I were a voter in your state I would say your support of the Gang of Eight Proposal will exacerbate unemployment, overwhelm our safety nets and lower the average wage. (Note: you may wish to acquaint yourself with the Tragedy of the Commons.)

If I were a voter in your state I would say your support for Obamacare (and don’t lets mince words, you favor it because you failed to stop it) will cost my family an additional $7500 per year for health insurance, and puts a lie to your claim that you stand for limited government.

If I were a voter in your state I would say your support for the war authorization was reckless, irresponsible, and the slippery slope to another Iraq.

You have a chance to redeem yourself, and before you reject it you would be wise to realize that such chances do not come often.

You can disavow your prior statements and support Senators Cruz and Lee.

Thank you for taking the time to email me to share your thoughts and concerns.

I want you to know that we read every single letter and e-mail that is sent to us in order to best understand the issues that are important to you. I meet with my staff regularly to discuss the issues raised in correspondence like yours and the insights you provided will certainly help my staff and me as we look into this issue.

Thank you again for your email. I hope you will continue to share your thoughts with me.

Well jbstonesfan at least your appearance on the blog is consistent, you only seem to show up to express your disappointment for either Bill or Hillary. You only see the glass half empty on just about every event and person. Maybe you had a really hard life.

I threw a fundraiser for you at my house nearly a decade ago. The president of Boeing Al Mulally and a dozen Microsoft executives were in attendance. So was Senator Slade Gordon, among others. You commented on the framed photos of Ben Hogan in the 1959 US Open at Wing Foot—the fact he had a cigarette. Kentucky is after all, a tobacco state.

Today, I am writing on a different matter, namely whether to de-fund Obama, and more specifically, whether to support your fellow Republicans Ted Cruz and Mike Lee OR Democrats Harry Reid and Dick Durbin on the closure motion on Wednesday and Friday. This is a life or death issue for many Americans. Therefore, your leadership is essential.

I don’t need to tell you that you are the Senate Minority Leader. Nevertheless word has it that you are showing no leadership on this issue, and others issues which are critical to the nation. If you have any doubt that this is the emerging consensus, I invite you to read Red State blog and in particular the following article, which is aimed squarely at you: http://www.redstate.com/2013/09/23/sitting-out-the-battle-fighting-a-fake-fight/

Republicans believe that you are allowing Senator McCain to speak for the Party, and that is a big mistake. In 2008 I campaigned for McCain in the general election, two of my friends were campaign managers (state and national), and I helped him win his third debate. But at this point, John is temperamentally unfit to lead the Party or to speak for the nation. He is too angry, and he has lost sight of the interests of the American People.

But he is not the only one. There is a cabal of back benchers who are taking cheap shots at Senators Cruz and Lee, and finding clever ways to deceive their constituents. They are in pare delicto.

Today I sent a letter to Senator Corker pointing out his betrayal of voters on immigration (which will lower wages, increase unemployment, and destroy safety nets); Obamacare (where he raises the white flag and savages those who want to fight); and his blind support for an attack on Syria (which is strongly opposed by the American People.)

I asked him the obvious question:

why would any average person in your state vote for you?

He is not up for election next year, whereas you are. I would think that now would be a good time for you to follow the lead of Rence Priebus and stand with Senator Cruz, Senator Lee, and Chairman Priebus.

And when I say stand, I do not mean pay lip service only. I mean rally the troops as only you can, to meet the enemy on this critical issue. As Bogart said, here’s looking at you.

Senator Ted Cruz was brilliant the first two hours of his filibuster. At 4 AM I heard he is still going. At some point he read Green Eggs and ham to daughters. That is what WPIX and CBS are airing this morning about his most capable effort. Along with McConnell’s “it cannot work now; wait until later when the time to defund will be ripe” statement. CBS claims Cruz to be on its morning show. If any of the great link hunters here find video of Ted’s early highlights, please post. Maybe in link below if this thread gets really bad and new post is not available. Foxfire does a pretty good job for me with long threads. As for Pretty Boy at UN. He said everything. So Mediots pick and chose to find the best, and were sure to include photo op of him with Dante DeBlasio and his magnificent Afro … at a fund raiser. You won’t be surprised to learn PB stated he had an Afro like that once.

This guy is going to be a disaster. I doubt it will be very long before we are looking back to the good old days of Mayor Bloomberg.
===

De Blasio Is ACORN’s Candidate For NYC Mayor
The corrupt organization formerly known as ACORN is alive and well, and their candidate won the Democrat primary in the New York City mayoral race. Bill de Blasio and ACORN go way back, and remember Bertha Lewis? She was there to celebrate his primary night victory and proclaimed “We’re back.” They’re just operating under a different name.http://lonelyconservative.com/2013/09/de-blasio-is-acorns-candidate-for-nyc-mayor/

This guy is going to be a disaster. I doubt it will be very long before we are looking back to the good old days of Mayor Bloomberg.
===

De Blasio Is ACORN’s Candidate For NYC Mayor
The corrupt organization formerly known as ACORN is alive and well, and their candidate won the Democrat primary in the New York City mayoral race. Bill de Blasio and ACORN go way back, and remember Bertha Lewis? She was there to celebrate his primary night victory and proclaimed “We’re back.” They’re just operating under a different name.http://lonelyconservative.com/2013/09/de-blasio-is-acorns-candidate-for-nyc-mayor/

Fake people who voted for him, including the long dead, cartoon characters, and the young pot heads who went from state to state voting for this zero. Of course ACORN gets much credit for helping install King Obama. All of this was made possible because MSM reported glowing info about their guy in a steady stream of gold plated $hit, and the DNC, which should stand for Do Not Care (about America) hand-picked him to be POTUS.

When fake people select a fake president, the end result is very real, almost insurmountable problems and challenges for this country.

Hold’em, you have been tireless in your research, posting, etc. and certainly deserve a break, but I hope you meant only a brief one, as in not extended and/or indefinite!

Oops, Shadow you posted the tweet. TY. Hillary looks amazing. I tried earlier to post the pic of her from New Yorker. They apparently did a feature article on her, and pic from the article was posted at Hillarys World. She looked ready of anything – Of course, I hope it’s the presidency that she’s really ready for.

This should make former Obama campaign attorney and white house counsel bob baeur nervous. If you have noticed how Issa and Gowdy handled questions about Learner, they suggested some optimism that she would testify but were never specific. That suggests to me that they have a hammer, and she may be willing to give up someone higher up the food chain. In fairness however, I do not know the specifics.
———————————————
Lerner negotiating with Oversight for immunity?

posted at 9:21 am on September 25, 2013 by Ed Morrissey

Just when we thought Lois Lerner might be safely out of the public spotlight, the House Oversight Committee might reel her back in. The Daily Caller reports that Lerner’s attorneys are negotiating with the House panel to strike an immunity deal that would restart the hearing session from which she withdrew with an arguably-faulty invocation of her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination:

IRS scandal figure Lois Lerner is negotiating through her lawyers with Rep. Darrell Issa’s House Oversight and Government Reform Committee about possibly gaining immunity to testify again in the committee’s investigative hearings.

“The Chairman did not adjourn the hearing, he recessed it. Ms. Lerner remains under subpoena. The Committee has not made any offer of immunity to Ms. Lerner. The Committee has, however, indicated a willingness to listen to any offers from her attorney about what she would testify to if it was offered,” Oversight Committee adviser Ali Ahmad told The Daily Caller. …

Though Lerner, who apologized for her IRS division’s improper scrutiny of conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status, can be called back before Issa’s committee without immunity, and even arrested if she doesn’t show up, Oversight seems to be taking a more diplomatic approach to get information out of her.
It’s not just a diplomatic effort. Lerner could be compelled to appear again, but she’d just take the Fifth if dragged back into the hearing room, and this time without any added commentary. Republicans can argue about the defective nature of her first invocation for the next decade, but short of a contempt order, there’s not much they can do about it except to strike her remarks from that previous appearance. Winning a contempt prosecution is no slam dunk, either, especially since Eric Holder’s Department of Justice would have to take it to court, and there’s little evidence that they would be enthusiastic about doing so.

What would immunity do for Lerner? So far, she looks like the linchpin in the effort to target conservatives at the IRS on the basis of their politics. They need her to testify truthfully about who ordered what and when, in order to see if this attack on the administration’s political opponents reaches to presidential appointees or the White House itself. If she has that kind of information and is willing to testify to it, I think Oversight would trade full immunity for it. If it turns out that this was all a Lois Lerner Production, though, they’re not going to give her squat. Then again, if that’s all Lerner has, then her attorneys wouldn’t even be bothering to talk to House Oversight’s counsel about immunity.

The congressional battle over defunding Obamacare through the Continuing Resolution has all the intrigue and internecine bickering of a tawdry cable reality show.

But beneath this veneer lies the fundamental question of the role of government. The media, shallow as ever, tend to focus on the horse race aspects of who is up and who is down, largely couched in comparisons of competing strategies and paths to success. But herein lies the real tragedy of the debate playing out today. In a phrase, we have seen this show before.

For context, we need to rewind 14 months. I will not name names. It was a private meeting and I’ll honor its confidential nature. I will, however, discuss its contents. They are most instructive as we view the Obamacare defunding battle today, the political equivalent of Waterloo. We just don’t know which party is Wellington and which, Napoleon.

It was July 25, 2012. At a private weekly meeting of conservatives, a Member of Congress had brought news that made our jaws drop. With the Continuing Resolution (CR) debate looming, the entirety of the GOP on Capitol Hill was united in the strategy to give the Obama administration everything it wanted.

You read that correctly. The opening bid in the 2012 CR debate from the Republicans was going to be a complete surrender to the president. Further, we were told the GOP message to the Democrats was going to be: take it or leave it. We’ll give you everything and not one penny more.

We asked for an emergency meeting with members from both chambers later that day.

At 5:30 that evening, in a room overflowing with senators, representatives, and conservative leaders, we had it out. We were offered the strategic thinking as devised by the establishment GOP leadership and accepted by its members. In short: Why rock the boat with a government shutdown showdown, when everything is breaking our way?

It was the belief of the GOP consultancy class, a wisdom passed along to and accepted by the GOP leadership on the Hill, that at the very least Mitt Romney should, probably could, and quite possibly would win the presidency in November. Why ruin this opportunity by threatening a government shutdown which would surely be blamed on Republicans and would surely be used by Obama to great advantage, and in a close race could destroy Republicans’ chances to capture the White House?

The political picture in the Senate was equally clear, we were told. Every poll and every pundit was convinced Republicans were going to capture the Senate handily, and all of Harry Reid’s horses and all of his men couldn’t keep a majority in place again – unless Republicans insisted on fighting this stupid fight.

The numbers were irrefutable, we were told. There was a 52-48 split in the Senate with Republicans poised to make the kind of gains in November that would obliterate the Democratic majority. In state after state, the Republican takeover was probable, if not assured. It was a very real possibility that Republicans could win eight key races (Florida, Indiana, Massachusetts, Missouri, Montana, North Dakota, Virginia, Wisconsin) giving them a commanding 56-seat majority. Why in the world risk this glorious probability with a foolish shutdown that would certainly backfire on Republicans? It would be political suicide.

The bottom line: come Election Day 2012, a Republican was going to capture the White House, Republicans the Senate, and with their majority in the House preserved (even enhanced) the GOP could move in January to undo all manner of awful things, including all things Obamacare, which would include the funding provided by them in the CR in question that day.

How… tidy. The message from the establishment GOP to conservatives last summer was crystal clear: we know what we’re doing. Sit down, shut up, and do as you’re told.

I was tasked with presenting a response. This “strategy” presented to us was just too much. Having fought in the trenches for three decades, I was not enamored of the political idiocy on display. To these members of Congress, so many being such good, courageous conservatives on any – on every – other day, so many I consider also to be friends, I delivered a rebuttal the likes of which they never expected from a fellow conservative.

It was the political prognostication shared by my conservative colleagues, and it was the exact opposite of the establishment’s.

The conservative movement is, unquestionably, the heart and soul of the GOP. It continues to be the height of arrogance for the moderate wing, now controlling the levers of power within the party, to presume that conservatives will follow them, willy-nilly, no matter what the moderates do or don’t do. How many times does history need to prove them wrong?

I reminded them that after a six-year spending binge by the Bush administration, all the while taking for granted the support of conservatives whose core beliefs were being shattered by this lurch toward an ever more obese federal government, the roof collapsed on Republicans in 2006. Conservatives stayed home that year, and the establishment GOP lost control of both Houses of Congress.

These politicians were reminded how, two years later, the Washington establishment Republicans were back in vogue and declaring that no “right wing ideologue” (which is about their most charitable description for conservatives) could possibly win the presidency in 2008. Again we were told only an acceptable moderate – in this case, Sen. John McCain – could succeed and must therefore be supported. Disaster struck again when conservatives stayed home.

In just two scant years, the GOP managed to lose both houses of Congress, and then the presidency, by embracing the political prescriptions of the moderate establishment wing of the party. And they expected us, in 2012, to fall into step behind them. No, we warned these Republicans. Something very bad was going to happen if they heeded the advice of the Beltway Punditocracy.

We warned the establishment that the results of 2012 would be devastating if Republicans did nothing of substance to stop Obamacare when they could do so and, instead, surrendered without a fight but with a lot of excuses – again. We forecast that millions of conservatives would stay home. We predicted this GOP capitulation would cost Mitt Romney the presidency and the Republicans the Senate. But our warnings fell on deaf ears. The decision had been made. After issuing all the perfunctory pledges to live to fight another day, the party surrendered on defunding Obamacare, offering Obama all he’d asked for in the CR, which he happily accepted, but not before adding billions more in spending knowing he had no opposition.

So who was right?

On Election Day, the Republicans were routed virtually everywhere. Not a single GOP consultant foresaw that in the presidential race, three million less voters would show up for Romney than were there for McCain four years earlier, but that is what happened. The results left the establishment GOP’s chief guru, Karl Rove, stuttering and sputtering in disbelief during live coverage of the election returns.

In the Senate, the results were arguably even more devastating. The Republicans not only failed to achieve the overwhelming majority they’d so confidently predicted, they succeeded with the unimaginable: they actually lost two seats. Democrats generated 1.4 million more voters than Republicans in House races, and the only thing that saved the GOP majority in that chamber was redistricting.

Today, we are reliving the miscalculation of the Summer of 2012 with moderate Republicans, bolstered by the professional consultants and even by some wobbly-kneed faux conservatives (the kind that couldn’t stomach Ronald Reagan either), declaring that if the GOP picks a fight over defunding Obamacare, the world will spin off its axis; while, on the other hand, if they do nothing at all, victory will be had next year.

Shame on any Republican who listens to these losers – and they are just that: repeat and stunningly incompetent losers. If Republicans capitulate by surrendering and funding this hideous law, the results will be even more dire. This time, there is no “next time” with Obamacare. This is the last chance, which is why no one has a Plan B. This time it won’t be discouragement or demoralization that drives conservatives away. It will be anger over a betrayal. This time it won’t be Republicans failing to stop Obamacare. This time it will be Republicans taking ownership of Obamacare.

It is time for every Republican Senator, led by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, to stand by Senators Mike Lee and Ted Cruz and do everything in their power to defend and preserve the defund language passed in the House CR.

If Republicans don’t fight this Obamacare battle with the sense of purpose required to win – and it’s a battle they most certainly can win – the loudest sound on Election Day 2014 will be the mass exodus of conservatives to the door, looking for new parties, or maybe just a nice beach to get away from it all. I suspect many, if not most, will never return.

I’ve said before that as a former smoker I constantly struggle with it. Have I fallen off the wagon sometimes? Yes. Am I a daily smoker, a constant smoker? No,” he said at a press conference in 2009.

“I don’t do it in front of my kids,” the president argued. “I don’t do it in front of my family. And, you know, I would say that I am 95 percent cured. But there are times where…There are times where I mess up.”

Obama’s smoking has taken on political dimensions, thanks to the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare, which begins early enrollment on October 1.

This article will take a bit of time to study and understand, but it’s important that you do. If some of you aren’t careful you could lose almost one third of your income to pay for your fair share of ZeroCare. Get ready for the wedding tax too. It sounds like some people are going to need a tax attorney to figure all of this out, or just get a divorce to get out from under.

This guy is going to be a disaster. I doubt it will be very long before we are looking back to the good old days of Mayor Bloomberg.
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De Blasio Is ACORN’s Candidate For NYC Mayor

The corrupt organization formerly known as ACORN is alive and well, and their candidate won the Democrat primary in the New York City mayoral race. Bill de Blasio and ACORN go way back, and remember Bertha Lewis? She was there to celebrate his primary night victory and proclaimed “We’re back.” They’re just operating under a different name.

On Tuesday she attended the 2013 Clinton Global Initiative sporting a new, shorter ‘do. The style appears to be a piece-y, layered bouffant with wispy side swept bangs and lots of volume in the back.

A source tells MailOnline that Clinton had celebrity stylist John Barrett cut her hair at his Bergdorf Goodman salon on Monday, and says that Clinton ‘was grinning when she left and was obviously happy with the ‘do.’

There is a reason why wives are not allowed to give testimony harmful to their husband in a court of law. But when they give glowing unearned testimonies like this, it is even worse.

She informs us that Bill is a birthday boy, and says it would mean so much to him to hear from all of us, in the form of a monetary contribution. And, as Aime Semple McPherson warned folding money, no pocket change in this big tent revival.

And why not? Just look at what he has contributed to enrich our lives: from betraying Hillary, to supporting Obama, to supporting cap and trade, to supporting fast and furious, to supporting head hunting tea party, to supporting Obamacare, to supporting an attack on Syria, and all the rest.

Seems like the least we could do. But I fear it would no good. If everyone in Florida contributed their life savings to Honest Bill, it would never be enough to match what Wall Street and K street stick in his back pocket.

Still a birthday is not cause to be depressed. He is one step closer to retirement, which means he can spend all his time with his wife who loves him dearly. And so does checkers.

And somewhere between now and then I must figure some way to get off his email list.

Birthdays are special times in our family — a chance to count our blessings and those of family members. We have been fortunate on both counts, and we’re especially fortunate to have your friendship and support.

I know it would mean so much to Bill to hear from you on his birthday, to know that you’re standing with him as he continues to serve the people of Florida in the United States Senate. At a time when our country is facing many challenges at home and abroad, with petty partisan attacks filling the airwaves and our mailboxes, we need Bill’s measured, moderate voice more than ever.

Please click here to sign Bill’s online birthday card — and then, if you can, contribute to his re-election campaign. Let’s show Bill how much we appreciate his leadership!

Bill considers his service an honor, a trust, and a privilege. And I know how much he values your support.

So when we gather for Bill’s birthday on Sunday, I’ll be sharing your online cards him, with messages of support from all across the country — and I know he’d be thrilled to hear from you, too.

Will you take a minute to sign it and add your own personal message to Bill?

Please click here to sign Bill’s online birthday card — and then, if you can, contribute to his re-election campaign. We need to keep him serving the people of Florida!

Thanks for helping us make Bill’s birthday extra special. Bill and I both are grateful for your friendship and your unfailing support.

I have a good friend who told me he does not want to hear anything more about Cruz and what he is after. I handled the response diplomatically but forcefully. He whines about the Republican Party, and voted for Obama. I told him what Cruz has done is flood the kleig lights on the party (his, not mine, not since Reagan)so we know who the liars and quislings are. I doubt he sees value in it. All he cares about his that nobody rocks the boat and disrupts the stock market. I read recently an article suggesting that what Bernake has been doing is keeping the stock market up with all this quantitative easing in order to protect the baby boom generation whose 401 ks are invested in same. But for that he would devalue the dollar and pave the way for massive inflation, will screw everybody, so it is a real mistake. Without quantitative easing, the stock market would not continue to rise while the future economic reports are even more bleak. It would correct, and the longer this continues, the larger the correction, and we will find who is swimming without a bathing suit. Meanwhile, here are some impressive comments from an article on PJ media, asking whether Cruz is just basking in the sun or doing the lords work for our country. They are pretty incisive.

Look, gang, I think we have a tendency to over-think things here a bit.

Let me make this REAL SIMPLE…because REAL SIMPLE is what impacts the “low information voters”.

When the Obamacare train wreck happens and people across the length and breadth of this nation poop twice and drop dead at what they will be paying for what they will be getting, they will remember that Senator Cruz of Texas stood alone against this catastrophe.

All the inside baseball minutiae about cloture rules and conference committee is so much jabberwocky to the howl that will arise from the
People:

” WHO is responsible for THIS and who stood against this?!!!”

All of the Moonbat Sweatlodge’s yodelling in the MSM and Obama’s “smarter and cooler than thou” blandishments will avail them nothing.

colliemum

It was not just an outstanding performance, Sen Cruz threw the windows wide open to show the American people how ill they’ve been served by all their representatives who voted for obamacare.

His slap-down of Sen Durbin was brilliant – and that after he’d been on the floor for over 20 hours.
The negativity in the MSM and that coming from his colleagues in the Senate, esp from those of his own party, will underline to the ordinary people how right he was. This will have consequences next year and in 2016.

I think this thing is wide open for Hillary. The RINOs will go for Christie, the base will boycott, and she’s in. The problem will be the flotsam and jestsome which tag along. They need to be kept out of the governing picture for the next eight years. Otherwise, they will drag everyone into the sewer.

As a veteran of the Cold War and a staunch opponent of Soviet expansionism, I am surprised to find myself now praising the Russians for their courage and honor in resisting the madness of this inept buffoon that occupies the White House. God Save America and the World from the stupidity of Barack Obama.—Larry Johnson @ No Quarter
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Barack Obama is a goddamn liar. He insists, “The evidence is overwhelming that the Assad regime used such weapons on August 21st. U.N. inspectors gave a clear accounting that advanced rockets fired large quantities of sarin gas at civilians.” This is patently untrue.

For starters, as I noted in an earlier piece on the UN Report, NOT A SINGLE TRACE OF SARIN WAS FOUND AT MOADAMIYAH, which was allegedly stuck by the Syrian military. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. According to Robert Fisk, writing in the Independent:

While the Assad regime in Damascus has denied responsibility for the sarin gas missiles that killed around 1,400 Syrians in the suburb of Ghouta on 21 August, information is now circulating in the city that Russia’s new “evidence” about the attack includes the dates of export of the specific rockets used and – more importantly – the countries to which they were originally sold. They were apparently manufactured in the Soviet Union in 1967 and sold by Moscow to three Arab countries, Yemen, Egypt and Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya. These details cannot be verified in documents, and Vladimir Putin has not revealed the reasons why he told Barack Obama that he knows Assad’s army did not fire the sarin missiles; but if the information is correct – and it is believed to have come from Moscow – Russia did not sell this particular batch of chemical munitions to Syria. . . .

A witness who was with Syrian troops of the army’s 4th Division on 21 August – a former Special Forces officer considered a reliable source – said he saw no evidence of gas shells being fired, even though he was in one of the suburbs, Moadamiya, which was a target for sarin. He does recall the soldiers expressing concern when they saw the first YouTube images of suffocating civilians – not out of sympathy, but because they feared they would have to fight amid clouds of poison.

“It would perhaps be going beyond conspiracy theories to say the government was not involved,” one Syrian journalist said last week, “but we are sure the rebels have got sarin. They would need foreigners to teach them how to fire it. Or is there a ‘third force’ which we don’t know about? If the West needed an excuse to attack Syria, they got it right on time, in the right place, and in front of the UN inspectors.”

Barack Obama cannot show a single piece of intelligence from US sources that corroborates that the Syrian Army used chemical weapons. First of all, the rockets recovered by the UN are not, as Fisk points out above, in the Syrian military arsenal. The recovered rockets came from elsewhere. Benghazi anyone? Second, the United States does not have any genuine evidence that Syrian chemical weapons units were deployed and carrying out strikes in the early morning hours of 21 August. And the Sarin? No samples that have been recovered and tested can be linked to Syria’s military stash.

Obama’s audacity in trying to manufacture a case to go to war in Syria makes him a scoundrel unworthy of the Nobel Peace Prize. Moreover, he, with the full cooperation of Turkey and Saudi Arabia, are helping fund and arm Islamic Jihadists, who are killing thousands of Syrian civilians. That makes him a war criminal. Yet, in his smug sanctimony, Obama pretends that he is fighting for what is right. Nothing to could be further from the truth.

As a veteran of the Cold War and a staunch opponent of Soviet expansionism, I am surprised to find myself now praising the Russians for their courage and honor in resisting the madness of this inept buffoon that occupies the White House. God Save America and the World from the stupidity of Barack Obama.

Hillary supporters will be inclined to look at what is occurring in the Republican Party as irrelevant, even though most of them have asked themselves more than once, why the Republican party does not challenge Obama, why if they believe what they claim to, do they always roll over. The reason I have been posting so much stuff on this is because, it answers the question in terms of the who, the why and the where. If you step back and reflect for a moment you will see that it all fits together. Admin has said that the system works best when both parties are true to the American People and adhere to their principles. Today that is not happening on either side of the aisle, consequently we are fighting a two headed monster. One last article on the subject, and then I will shut the fuck up. I am becoming a lone voice here.
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The Great Big GOP Establishment Obamacare Lie

By: Daniel Horowitz (Diary) | September 25th, 2013 at 12:15 PM |

Among the many insightful things Ted Cruz said during his historic filibuster through the night was that there is no honesty in the Republican Party. He noted that it would be better to have a Senate full of Republicans like Mike Lee and Democrats like Bernie Sanders – people who actually believe what they say, and are honest and open about it. What he meant to say is that most of Washington is full of finger lickin’ frauds like Mitch McConnell, John Cornyn, and Harry Reid.

We all know that Mitch McConnell and his mealy-mouthed minions believe that Obamacare is the law of the land and will never be repealed [root and branch]. But they are not man enough to publicly promulgate that belief. Instead they lie to their constituents and claim to be pushing defunding Obamacare, albeit with a smarter strategy. McConnell claims that the real fight will be when he becomes Majority Leader. He says so even as he admits that “parts of the law are OK.”

It’s time we cut through the clutter of this debate and break it down to one central point. Republicans will never have enough power to repeal Obamacare through the front door. The dependency will be immutable long before the possibility that they will win back the Senate and the White House.

Even if Republicans run the table in 2014, they will not win control of the Senate until January 2015 – long after people will already become dependent on the law. Moreover, Obama will still be President. By their own admission, establishment Republicans say they will never force the issue on the budget, opting only to repeal the law through the front door of the legislative process. That will never happen.

Even if we win the presidency and retain the Senate, we would not enjoy that control until 2017! Furthermore, they would not have 60 seats and would never have the guts to force the issue with a simple majority, especially after so many people are already dependent on the program.

If you are terrified of a shutdown and believe our plan won’t work, man up and say that Obamacare is here to stay.

Last night, Ted Cruz showed us all what it means to give voice to our concerns, instead of faking to vote with conservatives. We will never have a voice in Washington so long as Mitch McConnell is leading the Senate.

It’s time to rally to Matt Bevin – a man who will stand shoulder to shoulder with Ted Cruz and Mike Lee. There is no other race in the country that has the potential to completely change the face of the party. There is no other opportunity to transform the party into one which fights for the Republic; one which honestly communicates with its supporters.

The schism within the party has become irreconcilable. The great big lie over Obamacare has made this clear. It’s time for conservatives to act.